Kaboom! My very first Canon.

Well, after seeing the amazing images of a wild American Flamingo that a local photographer had taken with a point and shoot Canon camera, I had to take a closer look at this new machine.

After a brief exploration online reading several reviews I ordered it from Amazon with Prime and got it in 2 days. (I also got the extended 4 year warranty and 2 extra batteries).

I wish there was a had copy of the full manual because there are so many options on this camera and most of them are menu driven.

The main thing that I was interested in was having something to easily carry around with me that had a long telephoto lens and also a nice wide angle setting.

This camera had both. The quality of the images at both ends is really the mystery that I am attempting to solve here.

These images were handheld from relatively the same place on the porch of my studio with varying degrees of zoom applied.

My camera bag weighs about as much as me. I weigh in about 99 pounds and my bag fully packed is about 20 pounds then add on a tripod and you are talking heavy and bulky and slow.

I mostly shoot with my Nikon D800 that has been converted to infrared but I always carry a color camera as well. I can use all of my Nikon lenses on all of my cameras. I have been using a Nikon D90 for it's beautiful color and low light capabilities and price.

Let's see how they compare:

Here is the Canon PowerShot SX60 HS from wide angle to telephoto: (Taken with a tripod.)

This would make a great private eye camera!

Here is the Nikon D90 with 3 different lenses at full telephoto: Nikon 18 - 70, 80-200 and 200-400

Here's the Canon PowerShot SX60 HS again:

It has some other cool features that I did a little bit of experimenting with.

These images were all taken without a tripod.

Poster, Vivid, Soft Focus and Toy Camera are just of few of the many filters.

Toy Camera...

All in all I am pretty happy with the results for such a lightweight and affordable digital camera.

Here are some more images that I shot with the Canon PowerShot SX60 HS.

Here is one last comparison with the Nikon D90. The white balance was set to shade on the first one taken by the Nikon D90.

This was take on fully automatic with the Canon PowerShot SX60 HS.

Here is another shot taken with the White Balance set to Shade.

I took the PowerShot SX60 HS down to Bunche Beach for sunset to test it out and here are some of the results. I pretty much stood in the same place to take all of these photographs.

I was amazed at how bright the things that I could barely see with my eyes would come out. Overall I was pretty impressed because I was only carrying a tripod and this very lightweight point and shoot camera.

This faraway shot of Fort Myers Beach was taken at full telephoto.

These birds were so far away and dark that I could not see them without this camera.

These birds were closer, and look pretty sharp but there just isn't much detail when you enlarge them. It's like there's just shades of color with no details. Sharp but softer than I am used to.

Here is a series that speaks for itself...

Is that the green flash?

Thank you for taking the time to read this review. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Kim