I finally decided on what camera to buy and the choice was Canon PowerShot SX230 HS. Among the reasons why my choice fell on the Canon were especially its video capabilities, and the zoom.
Monday to Saturday I spend on a holiday in Berlin, Germany so I have now had some time to test the camera and I really do like it. However there are a few points that annoy me. First is the flash – I have no problem when I use it, but when I let other people use the camera then the problem arises. The problem is that the flash pups up when you turn on the camera, but if your finger is on top of the flash when you turn it on then the flash stays down. That means that if you let people borrow your camera in lowlight conditions you might end up with pretty bad pictures.
This photo would have been amazing with flash.
Second problem is the battery, I went to the Zoo in Berlin and I had to refrain from shooting some photos and video I would have shot if the camera had a better battery life. I don’t know if other cameras with the same specs are any better than the Canon but I still find it annoying.
Third problem is the GPS. A lot of the photos I take are not being geo-tagged because the GPS is to slow, this could be solved by letting the GPS be turned on all the time (even when the camera is turned off) but since I already have problems with the battery then that is not really an option.
Fourth is the horrible horrible software that Canon supplies with the camera. When I bought a Canon PhotoShot A530 in 2006 I got more or less the same software and it seems like Canon has not made any updates to the software since then. That is not good enough Canon. The worst is the PhotoStitch software – since the Canon does not have a feature where the camera stitches photos together for panorama shots then a pieces of software like that is essential, but the performance of that program is just horrendous. I found the free software Hugin is way way better.
Canon PhotoStitch
Hugin
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