Canon PowerShot SX20 IS

[DevinCatron]

I was looking into buying a Canon PowerShot SX20 and I was wondering if it would be worth the money? Are there replacement lenses for it or just the attatchments? And is it a DSLR or just an advanced Point and Shoot?

[OsmosisStudios]

The SX20is is a Bridge camera, meaning it bridges the gap between the pocket (P&S) cameras and the dSLRs. It is, however, still a P&S at heart.

The lens it has standard is a 28-560 equivalent, but you can get adapters for them. I've only seen a few examples and have yet to be impressed. For the price, I'd be tempted to go with an XS or XSi and work my way up from there. It does, however, provide a great all-in-one solution: its just not going to be the same.

[Dr Nick Riviera]

I had the opportunity to shoot with the SX20IS last week. You can get very nice pictures from it in bright sunshine, it has a fantastic zoom range from wide angle (28 mm) to extrem tele (560 mm). It has a very usefull image stabilizer. It has a very nice macro mode. It is lightweight and you can handle it nearly like a DSLR, but...

- don't try to shoot at low light, the cam increases the ISO and there is much noise
- the electronic viewfinder is poor, even it is better to have one in bright sunshine, when
- you don't see anything on the little monitor
- you can't play with the depth of field - it has a little sensor and everything is sharp (or not, when the shutter time is to long - mostly indoor)

I had to take pictures from a little afterwork party indoor. Less than 50 percent of the pictures are ok, really good are only a few. If you want to use this as a Nice-Weather-and_Sunshine-Cam, it will please you. In this case the cam will work better than the most of the other cams except DSLRs.

Cheers
Dr Riviera