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Canon SX50 Specs (4 Viewers)

Have had this camera a little over a week, Consider all the bird shots in my stream are through double glazing window. The starling shot from around 70ft away. I think its a pretty amazing camera. My only advice would be to not use it in automatic mode. It seems to like to make everything overly white.

Shutter priority works pretty sweet. Looking forward to taking it out and about over the next few days.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/giancam/

Feel free to have a browse^.
 
The DPREVIEW mentions that it does clip highlights and recommends enabling the DR correction feature. Possibly one solution to circumvent that would be to expose slightly to the left (check the histogram) resulting in slight underexposure and lifting up the shadows lightly in DPP, not too much as it can bring up a lot of noise I presume as the review goes on to say it get quite noisy after ISO800 which dosent bode well for lifting shadows in RAW, but perhaps someone with the camera and same RAW sampes can test? Zoom range is impressive and looks like a nice camera anyhow and seen some good bird photos taken with it.
 
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It is dead easy and quick to apply exposure compensation with these SX superzooms - like any Camera the thing is to get the exposure correct 'out of the Camera'. Sure you have a bit of leeway if you shoot RAW but even then if you completely blow a highlight there will be no detail to recover. To get the maximum dynamic range you need to expose to the right (ETTR) so that the highlights are just clipping.
 
Rob, I agree with you, but, ETTR with a sensor which seems to easily clip the highlights is taking a risk. Rem this cam has a smaller sensor than a APC-C DSLR and as a result, DR MIGHT be less anyway. That rule bodes well for crop sensors and full frame DSLR, in fact, I use ETTR technique, but for this cam, perhaps its best to underexpose slightly and expose to the left. Just my opinion, perhaps some owners with RAW samples can verify this.
 
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Birdman7 said:
Rob, I agree with you, but, ETTR with a sensor which seems to easily clip the highlights is taking a risk. Rem this cam has a smaller sensor than a APC-C DSLR and as a result, DR MIGHT be less anyway. That rule bodes well for crop sensors and full frame DSLR, in fact, I use ETTR technique, but for this cam, perhaps its best to underexpose slightly and expose to the left. Just my opinion, perhaps some owners with RAW samples can verify this.
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I have the SX40 and always shoot to the right, as far as my experience goes it is no more easily to clip the highlights with the SX40 as it is with any other Camera. In fact the metering is very good.
The big problem with purposely underexposing and pushing in processing is that because of the tiny sensor it is more prone to noise and any pushing in processing will amplify the noise and make matters worst. Couple this with the fact that the dynamic range will also be less than a bigger sensor Camera I have always found that it is more essential to ETTR with these little sensor Cameras to get the best out of them.
 
I agree in theory Rob, and I havent used either the SX40 or the SX50 for that matter. Neither do I know how much highlight clipping the SX40 is prone to. But if SX50 DPR review is anything to go by, it goes on to say, and I quote, "DR Correction is especially helpful at reducing the highlight clipping that is a big problem on this camera. What artifacts or luminance noise can be added by enabling DR? Thats another question.

If it is a big problem as they say, I wondered, whether it might be wise to underexpose slightly and recover them in post, rather than ETTR in this case only and taking into account the reviewer's opinion. How much noise would result by even a slight shadow lifting on the SX50, I do not know. As i said earlier, would be interesting to test and compare with the SX40, whether ETTL would be viable or not :)
 
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Brian Stone said:
Just got back from a short trip to Morocco and the SX50 has surpassed my expectations. Believe me I would have been getting nothing near these results with my DSLR setup that cost three times as much second hand as this did new.

For someone like me who is unlikely ever to be able to justify a full-frame body and fast long lens it's a no-brainer.
Click to expand...

Good work Brian. Most people would be more than happy with these.
Neil.
 
speckled wood said:
Looking at the review the reviewer has started from the standpoint that higher zooming capabilities are "absurd", also so some (to me) childish comments about the "whalelike shape" of the SX40 rather than getting down to looking at the SX50 in the context of what it can do and relating that to real users needs. I for one are not concerned about how good looking or sleek a camera is (they are purely personal things), what I am concerned about is how good looking the photos it takes are and how the camera handles and how easy it is to get good pictures.

To me the main weakness of the SX40 are that it is difficult to adjust the setting manually and the SX50 has not addressed that issue .. but others here have no problem with those issues. To me if the camera roughly matches the SX40 up to 35x then the ability to go to 50x optically is a bonus. RAW does not matter to me but to some it does matter so I do not begrudge that to those to whom it does matter.


A quick look at Amateur Photographer yesterday, showed that AP gave the camera 81% as against DP reviews 72%. I am not a really a fan of Canon but I would give the SX40 90% and I am tempted to think that I would give the SX50 the same.

As regards the Panasonic, back in 2010 24x zoom was amazing, I had a FZ45 and was very impressed with its performance and pictures, however things have moved on and 24x is no longer impressive but Panasonic seem to be stuck in a rut, they have done two updates to the FZ100 offering what are to most users basically the same performance and nothing to my mind real to choose between them because the differences are simply "tweekings". In the same period Canon have offered the SX30, SX40 and SX50 and each camera has offered real incremental and practical gains over the previous model, and gains that almost any user can actually perceive.
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Good points.
I was wanting the Raw and the extra zoom was useful but 840 mm was good enough most of the time. I was hoping for an uplift in the video capabilities but not there , so maybe I have to wait for the SX60. I would be happy if they dropped the zoom back to around 1000 mm and made the lens a little faster (f5.6 ).
It's the zooming range and the Image Stablising that make it for me. It means you can travel with just one camera and shoot Hd videos hand held.
If I could only have one camera/lens combo it would be the one I chose.
Neil.
 
giancam said:
Have had this camera a little over a week, Consider all the bird shots in my stream are through double glazing window. The starling shot from around 70ft away. I think its a pretty amazing camera. My only advice would be to not use it in automatic mode. It seems to like to make everything overly white.

Shutter priority works pretty sweet. Looking forward to taking it out and about over the next few days.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/giancam/

Feel free to have a browse^.
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Wow - you have some excellent photos there! They are a great selling point for this camera!
 
For info: this week's Amateur Photographer, dated 19 January 2013, has reviewed the SX50 HS.

As an SX40 HS owner and user, I was surprised by their comment on how the SX50 HS felt - "plastic" "feels like a low cost model". To me, the surface finish of the plastic "feels" better than my SX40. And, not every camera has to be as tough or as heavy as my 1D Mark IV!
 
A couple more examples:
f/6.5, 1/400s, ISO-80 taken on continuous in JPEG mode.
 

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Excellent shots Brian! If you allow me to make a small comment, see if you can remove the purple line of chromatic aberation along on the right side of the owl. You can easily do it on Canon's own DPP software. Not sure if the SX50 has inbuilt correction?
 
Birdman7 said:
Excellent shots Brian! If you allow me to make a small comment, see if you can remove the purple line of chromatic aberation along on the right side of the owl. You can easily do it on Canon's own DPP software. Not sure if the SX50 has inbuilt correction?
Click to expand...
The CA is the biggest problem with these small sensor cameras (just the same on the SX40). Especially noticeable on areas of high contrast of course. Like you say easy enough to get rid of in post processing thought.
 
It's one of the reasons I included this shot. As I mentioned (and Roy points out) before the camera is prone to the problem. These shots are pretty much cropped and resized only. How do you use DPP to correct this with the SX50?
 
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Open Digital Professional Pro, the software supplied with your Canon camera. (you can also use Adobe Camera Raw).

Right click on any image, select and open tool palette, and on the last tab LENS, ul see the option to correct lens aberration. look at the attached pic.

Click on TUNE. Click on the CA box, slide the blue slider, and watch the purple fringe go. Use the cursor to go to the edge of the Owl, and tune the image until the purple line dissapears from the edge.

I hope this helps and find it useful.
 

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Thanks but I should have said those options are greyed out for me and the Lens Data says Not Available. Choosing update only gives you a list of EF lenses. Is it available for RAW, because these were taken as JPEGs only, in order to get the burst rate up?
 
Fair enough. You should be able to remove it anyhow via the Adobe Camera Raw Plugin, its one of the tabs on the right hand side, CA. Under the preferences option you can select jpegs to open via the raw plugin :)
 
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Juvenile Coopers hawk lurking by the feeder today.

These are not cropped. Just reduced in size to attach.

Leftmost photo is though the window at max optical zoom.

The middle is outside from the driveway looking in the front yard.with max zoom and 2x teleconverter on. It's a gray day. No sun.

The right-most I like because it shows how the camera is able to focus correctly though the leaves and such.
 

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