Canon PowerShot SX700 HS Digital Camera - Wi-Fi Enabled (Black)

This is a great camera with big camera features in a little package. I didn't want to lug my big camera around on a recent trip to Europe and wanted to replace my compact camera for motorcycling. I was looking at the SX710 HS when I saw that this was also available. The biggest difference is the lack of GPS and this was quite a bit cheaper.In looking at a fellow traveler's SX710 I find I like the menus on this better. To delete unwanted shots you have to go to a sub-menu rather than just pressing a wastebasket button as you have on most other Canons. If you like to cull shots on the fly this is a big drawback.They've compacted the number of scenes available in that mode. I found that the standard auto setting produced better results than the low light scene for city streets at night. Auto also works great for the 'magic hour' at sunrise and sunset. The long zoom allows me great flexibility in framing. The new processor gives great picture details and processes quickly.The grip on the camera is rather shallow but you get used to it. It has a anti-shake mode but it doesn't seem to work well when you have the telephoto all the way out when you get there you really need to brace the camera, put it on a solid surface,have a monopod or tripod to get the best shots. The auto focus seems easily confused if you swing the camera around as you might at a sporting event or other fast action.Battery life with the standard settings isn't very good so you need to adjust them. Get at least one more Canon battery as a backup because you'll need it during a long day of shooting foliage or travel pix.The included manual doesn't tell you much except how to get the camera unpacked, put in the battery and memory card. To really find out how to use the various settings and controls go to the Canon site and download the guide. The quickest way there is to Google it.I also put the hand leash from my old camera on this one. Canon used to have a little adjustment piece that made it feel more secure on your hand. The included one feels way too lose and didn't give me much confidence.I also used the one button WIFI connect to get my shots from the camera to my iPad and then to Google Photos. This meant I could back up my shots as I traveled and could view them on a bigger screen to make decisions on which ones to delete. Once you get the app it worked pretty smoothly, although it worked better with the iPad than it did with my Android phone.

Wonderful camera! I fell and badly scratched my older powershot camera that had a 20x zoom. This one has a 30x zoom and it is terrific! this one also has wifi and I can transfer the pictures either to my PC where the repository is located, or to my Google drive. Getting the wifi setup to transfer to the Google drive was rather easy, but it was more complicated to get it setup to transfer to my PC. The PC transfer uses another interface or application that must be installed and must pop up when you ask the camera to access your PC. Figuring that interface out and what was needed required me to read the instructions carefully to understand them. I thought I had installed the application but it didn't work, so I had to uninstall it and re-install and it finally worked. Picture quality of the camera is great. Small footprint so I can put it in my pocket. I like the fact that the flash must be manually deployed. I found on my last powershot camera that when I wanted the flash, I always had my finger over the flash stopping it from popping up. This one, I must flick and button and consequently my finger is out of the way when the flash pops up. The recovery time for the flash is very very quick. I took 3 or 4 flash pictures one right after the other with no delay. I ordered this camera for the battery and battery charger were the same as my older powershot, thus I didn't have to buy another battery as a spare. Now I have 3 batteries! The LCD is quite bright so that when taking a picture in the sunlight you can still see the LCD. Great camera and a good buy!

I've been a long time photographer, advanced amateur or semi-pro depending on what time you catch me. I've become a huge fan of these relatively inexpensive zoom cameras. I take them into the field, get great shots and do things with them that I'd never even think about doing with an expensive DSLR! Hang them off a boat, trudge through a river or stream, deal with a bit of rain...whatever...I call them adventure cameras and I generally replace them every couple few years when the technology gets better.This jump, however, didn't turn out as expected.I've owned quite a few cameras in my days and honestly, I have to say, this thing isn't even quite as good as my older SX130IS series it replaced that I paid 2/3rds as much for. One might think that more megapixels and current processing/focusing technology is better, but the image quality in this camera just hasn't quite lived up to my expectations. That really disappoints me because I've been a long time fan of Canon's optics and camera gear and this is the very first camera I've been less than impressed by.I can pretty confidently say that I've run this camera through it's paces in multiple environments, lighting and types of photography. It excels really well at portrait styles, producing high quality, colorful images that practice both color fidelity and clarity. In my opinion, however, this model falls flat on it's face when it comes to both detailed scenic situations as well as high-contrast environments. The problems I've experienced are related to both clarity/sharpness as well as it's ability to deal with a relatively high dynamic range, producing images that are somewhat flat and commonly poorly exposed for the situation. Examples of the clarity issues are easily found in mountain vistas, deciduous tree lines or other areas where you expect both good contrast and sharpness to define the characteristics of what you're trying to shoot. Even at high resolution, the output is somewhat more grainy (even at low ISO) and fuzzy that I'd expect...and I'm not expecting SLR quality here, just what a camera made five years ago could produce with less resolution! The high dynamic range issue is always a challenge for any camera, but this one will almost force me to get my exposure against the sky and then shoot my subject, resulting in a very easy out-of-focus scenario. Pretty much any picture with a mostly-cloudy sky will result in a white sky with virtually no detail. Also, many shots experience what I'd most relate to noise even at low ISO...but it's probably best described as micro-artifacts in the final output...enough that a noise filter can't really do anything about them.I did settle on this model after doing a fair bit of research, but since I was interested in purchasing the "latest and greatest" in hopes that it would perform as well, or better, than it's predecessors...the information was somewhat limited at the time of my purchase. What reviews I did find didn't really mention any issues with capture quality...or at least anything out-of-the-norm for a typical highly portable zoom lens.Overall, it has all the features that one could expect out of a camera. It of course features your auto modes (both with manual or auto ISO control), aperture mode, shutter speed mode and even a full manual. There's a number of scene options that I don't typically use, but might be useful to a less experienced photographer. The video functions are highly improved over my previous SX130IS...no longer is there a video time limit and it also features 1080P captures in video mode. The optical zoom featured on this camera is rather astounding, the 30X can really reach and you only get a little bit of clarity loss at the fullest extents. As with all cameras of this nature, the additional digital zoom is a virtually worthless feature as the quality drops extremely quickly. (It's really odd though since the displayed image looks good...the output, however, does not.) It does feature some nice automatic image processing features where you can get different results in one shooting...kind of fun to play with a bit, but something more easily done with better results after the fact outside of the camera.Physically, this is one of the best small zooms I've ever had. It's a very nice size, easy to shoot with one hand, plenty lightweight and hardly noticeable in a front pocket. The reduction in size from my previous SX series was much appreciated. The buttons are all well laid out and operation is fairly easy to figure out if you've used a digital camera previously. I haven't had any issues to note with navigating the camera's features and adjustments to speak of. The manual does detail these things out fairly clearly if you need assistance.As for the video capture, I've played around with it a little and it's about on par for what I'd expect from these zoom cameras. Not great quality, but not inferior either. You won't get a National Geographic quality shot no matter how hard you try or light your scene, but it's watchable. It does improve on my older SX model in both image stability and overall quality. Surprisingly, though, compared to my previous SX130IS camera, indoor and low-light performance is incredibly noisy, almost approaching unusable..maybe just good enough to archive your family memories and so forth, but definitely not anything you'd want to produce professionally. It doesn't feature the death-blow video crash that it's predecessor experienced when it comes to switching to video, so that's a welcome change. But if quality video (especially indoors) is an important thing to you...you'll probably only be happy with a DSLR setup, really.The supplied battery isn't very good, in my estimation. Without flash or even much in the way of LCD usage, you can maybe squeak out a hundred pictures or so. I purchased two higher capacity Vivitar batteries to accompany the new camera and these are improved, but also don't have very accurate scales when it comes to battery remaining...they go from two bars to death in a few pictures. I haven't even measured with a lot of LCD use or flash usage, but I'd anticipate even worse performance regardless of the power source.A few features that I was really expecting from a camera that came out this year and didn't make it? Panoramics! I can do this on my cell phone...why can't my dedicated expensive camera do it? HDR captures? Something I really wanted to also see and isn't found on this camera. Lastly, and probably most importantly, I wanted to see RAW support. This lacking feature has found it's way into competitors platforms of similar make and model, so there's no good reason for it not to exist in this unit..it's just simply a superior capture method with the memory cards we have these days. I knew all of these limitations going in...but it's a little disappointing to me that Canon isn't keeping up on the feature sets. I've never not bought a Canon camera...but my next camera might not be one.Don't get my review wrong. I'm a Canon fan and bought this camera even though I knew competitors were outpacing Canon in the feature sets. (If you doubt me, find my glowing and popular review of the SX130IS!) I did not want to throw them under the bus for a less than stellar product. Maybe some of these issues can be fixed in firmware...who knows. But, I think this camera will get scheduled for a relatively early replacement and find itself as a backup camera sometime next year.If I could do it over again, I might have held out for the SX520HS, but more than likely, probably would have given a more serious look at competitors. Some of the cameras I looked at had all the features I wanted, with better optics, for not much more than this camera.