Customer reviews from usa.canon.com
Canon - PowerShot SX500 16.0-Megapixel Digital Camera - Black
Average customer rating
4.2
(38 Reviews)
Rating breakdown 38 reviews
5 Stars
25
4 Stars
3
3 Stars
5
2 Stars
2
1 Star
3
73%of customers recommend this product.
(
27 out of
37)
Customer Reviews for Canon - PowerShot SX500 16.0-Megapixel Digital Camera - Black
Customer Rating
5
LOOOVE IT
on June 17, 2013
Posted by: Anonymous
from peabody, MA
all i wanted to say is last time i checked this was 130$ bucks cheaper and the price is saying i SAVED money. well anyways i love this camera one of the best point and shoots and if you know how to use the setting ou can get pro results
Pros: good battery life, Good Low-Light Performance, Nice features/settings, excellent image quality, Lightweight/Portable, Simple controls/menu, easy to use
Cons: Dim LCD, Flimsy Construction
I would recommend this to a friend!
Written by a customer while visiting usa.canon.com
Customer Rating
5
Great Camera
on June 11, 2013
Posted by: spikynanna
from North Carolina
Great little camera, easy to hold and use. Very nice features, great quality of pictures
Pros: good battery life, Good Low-Light Performance, Nice features/settings, excellent image quality, durable, Bright LCD, Lightweight/Portable, Simple controls/menu, easy to use
I would recommend this to a friend!
Written by a customer while visiting usa.canon.com
Customer Rating
3
Disappointed
on May 23, 2013
Posted by: SOFFEFDL
from Charlotte, NC
I purchased this camera because of the great features and compact size. Performance in terms of picture quality was very disappointing. The LCD was very grainy/pixelated. Good light, low light, stills, motion...nothing looked crisp. Performance seemed sluggish. Hoping that it was the particular camera I had...I returned it and got another. Unfortunately, the image quality was just as poor...the LCD was just as blurry...and it seemed just as slow...so it must be the nature of the product. I have returned it and will invest in something else.
Pros: Nice features/settings, Lightweight/Portable, Simple controls/menu, easy to use
Cons: Dim LCD, Poor image quality, Poor Low-Light Performance, slow
No, I would not recommend this to a friend.
Written by a customer while visiting usa.canon.com
Customer Rating
5
on May 3, 2013
Posted by: DJ
from Sebring, FL
I really like this camera. The only problem is that it would be nice if there was a page I could print out the would show "all" the icons with their purpose instead of having to keep going back to my computer to try and look it up in the guide I downloaded. It is hard to see some of the images on my computer.
Pros: good battery life, Good Low-Light Performance, Nice features/settings, excellent image quality, Bright LCD, Lightweight/Portable, Simple controls/menu, easy to use
I would recommend this to a friend!
Written by a customer while visiting usa.canon.com
Customer Rating
1
SO disapointed
on April 20, 2013
Posted by: wishes4kissez
I got this camera as a gift for Christmas. I am barrel racer, and I run a web page/ advertise for a horse business. The camera was intended to be used to capture awesome action shots while racing, as well as video, and take photos of the horses for the sale ads.
Major problem with this is that if anything in the frame moves AT ALL its blurry! I cant even take pictures of a horse standing still because if he breaths or swishes his tail or moves his head a little its blurry! And forget the action shots altogether! The video is ok and I tried taking still shots off of the video but they were blurry as well.
I tried all different settings and got super frustrated. This camera is hard to use and hard to program and the instructions are long and confusing and not helpful at all. I even had my friend who is a professional photographer try to help me find a setting that could take a clear image and even she couldn't. Then I went to the store and had them try to help me, no luck there either. It really should have an action setting. I mean it has a freaking fireworks setting, but not a sports or action of some type? How often does an average person take a photo of fireworks compared to how often they would use a sports or action setting!!!
I can see that if you take photos of things that dont move at all, like maybe a statue, it takes really nice images. Just dont try to use it for anything that might move, at all. I cant use this camera for anything that I wanted a camera for and I ended up just using the iphone which does a much better job, which is really sad!
I really wish I could make this camera work for me, but I am beyond frustrated with it at this point.
Cons: Missing features/settings, Poor image quality, Poor Low-Light Performance, Difficult to use, Complicated controls/menu
No, I would not recommend this to a friend.
Written by a customer while visiting usa.canon.com
Customer Rating
5
Great Birthday Gift
on April 7, 2013
Posted by: M
from Western NY
Received this for my birthday and I couldn't be happier. I have another Canon camera ( SX120 IS ) and I really like it but this camera with the 30X zoom is amazing in a small package. I take a lot of wildlife shots and this camera fills the bill. I also like the fact that I can do everything with a point and shoot and not have to carry extra lenses. I would amd have recommended Canon to family and friends.
Pros: good battery life, Good Low-Light Performance, Nice features/settings, excellent image quality, durable, Bright LCD, Lightweight/Portable, Simple controls/menu, easy to use
I would recommend this to a friend!
Written by a customer while visiting usa.canon.com
Customer Rating
4
Love this for videos and daylight pics
on March 25, 2013
Posted by: E
from RI
I bought this camera over Christmas break because I wanted a digital camera that was not quite as heavy-duty as a DSLR, but still had very good specs (I had been stalking this camera and another one for a few months before purchasing).
I was surprised at first at how light and compact this camera is. It is smaller than I had expected it to be.
I use this camera to record many functions and concerts at our high school to upload to youtube. I saw another reviewer had an issue with the audio and video not lining up and I have not encountered this problem (I have a mac and use imovie to edit all the clips).
I am thinking about getting a spare battery though as that has been my only issue when recording. The battery lasted over an hour while recording in HD, but I did not realize that I should have had a spare in order to record the whole event.
The zoom on this camera -for both stills and video- is amazing (especially when using a tripod). I stood 10+ feet away from a ping pong ball and on the mechanical zoom alone was able to clearly focus in on the company label on the ball. With the digital zoom, the camera zeroed in on one letter of said label while maintaining crisp quality.
I love the automatic macro setting. Initially my brother and I thought that you had to be on a specific setting in order to be in macro mode, but the camera focuses automatically. You just have to have a little patience in order to focus it properly for the light/which object you want to focus on. It may take a couple times of half-way releasing the shutter and re-depressing it in order to get the proper focus.
My friend and I played around with the manual settings and they were fairly easy to figure out... you can't be scared to try adjusting settings and realize that you can undo almost anything if you click the wrong button.
For manual shooting, I would go to my 35mm every time and use this digital as more of an automatic though.
My only qualms with this camera is using it in low-light conditions, camera to computer quality, and no viewfinder. It is iffy about whether a good picture comes out or not and the flash is very good for indoor situations, but sometimes does not help with outdoor, low light situations. I literally had taken two pictures with the same exact settings and focus; one came out gorgeous and the other was grainy and unfocused (even though it appeared fine as I was focusing it). The camera to computer quality is odd with some images. It seems like for some of the images, the camera has too high of a megapixel rate. There are pictures I've taken with this camera that look fine on the camera body itself, but once it's transferred to the computer, it is a little grainy and appears like it is worse quality (as desktop wallpaper) than pictures taken with my very old 4mp camera. I would LOVE a viewfinder on this camera, but for all the other brilliant things about this camera, I would willingly let that little detail go.
The price of this camera is excellent especially considering what it is capable of. Even if you forgo the picture-taking aspects of it and use it primarily as a video camera, I believe it is still easily worth the price (though I do not know why you wouldn't take advantage of the wonderful pictures it can take).
Overall, I do love this camera and it is extremely easy to use and carry, but there are a couple of features that could have been a little bit better or just more consistent.
I was surprised at first at how light and compact this camera is. It is smaller than I had expected it to be.
I use this camera to record many functions and concerts at our high school to upload to youtube. I saw another reviewer had an issue with the audio and video not lining up and I have not encountered this problem (I have a mac and use imovie to edit all the clips).
I am thinking about getting a spare battery though as that has been my only issue when recording. The battery lasted over an hour while recording in HD, but I did not realize that I should have had a spare in order to record the whole event.
The zoom on this camera -for both stills and video- is amazing (especially when using a tripod). I stood 10+ feet away from a ping pong ball and on the mechanical zoom alone was able to clearly focus in on the company label on the ball. With the digital zoom, the camera zeroed in on one letter of said label while maintaining crisp quality.
I love the automatic macro setting. Initially my brother and I thought that you had to be on a specific setting in order to be in macro mode, but the camera focuses automatically. You just have to have a little patience in order to focus it properly for the light/which object you want to focus on. It may take a couple times of half-way releasing the shutter and re-depressing it in order to get the proper focus.
My friend and I played around with the manual settings and they were fairly easy to figure out... you can't be scared to try adjusting settings and realize that you can undo almost anything if you click the wrong button.
For manual shooting, I would go to my 35mm every time and use this digital as more of an automatic though.
My only qualms with this camera is using it in low-light conditions, camera to computer quality, and no viewfinder. It is iffy about whether a good picture comes out or not and the flash is very good for indoor situations, but sometimes does not help with outdoor, low light situations. I literally had taken two pictures with the same exact settings and focus; one came out gorgeous and the other was grainy and unfocused (even though it appeared fine as I was focusing it). The camera to computer quality is odd with some images. It seems like for some of the images, the camera has too high of a megapixel rate. There are pictures I've taken with this camera that look fine on the camera body itself, but once it's transferred to the computer, it is a little grainy and appears like it is worse quality (as desktop wallpaper) than pictures taken with my very old 4mp camera. I would LOVE a viewfinder on this camera, but for all the other brilliant things about this camera, I would willingly let that little detail go.
The price of this camera is excellent especially considering what it is capable of. Even if you forgo the picture-taking aspects of it and use it primarily as a video camera, I believe it is still easily worth the price (though I do not know why you wouldn't take advantage of the wonderful pictures it can take).
Overall, I do love this camera and it is extremely easy to use and carry, but there are a couple of features that could have been a little bit better or just more consistent.
Pros: excellent image quality, Lightweight/Portable, Simple controls/menu, easy to use, automatic macro setting, hd quality video
Cons: hard to focus in low-light situations, must be patient with focus, no viewfinder
I would recommend this to a friend!
Written by a customer while visiting usa.canon.com
Customer Rating
3
Ehh.
on March 13, 2013
Posted by: C-dawg
from Bellingham, WA
Ok so I got this camera for christmas and had been wanting a nice camera to photograph nature, self portraits and all that and just so i could get a good quality out of it. But this camera doesn't really satisfy me to be honest. The pictures are never grain free and I can't learn how to use it manually anywhere, they way i learned in photography class must not have been right because everytime i do it the lighting is just horrible. I really have a lot of sadness some times just because it kind of sucks compared to what I thought it was going to be, and I still can't figure out if I can find a detachable lense to go with it which would probably help a lot with the bloody focusing it has. This camera just adjitates me every time i talk about it lol
Pros: Nice features/settings, Simple controls/menu, easy to use
Cons: Dim LCD, Poor image quality, Poor Low-Light Performance
No, I would not recommend this to a friend.
Written by a customer while visiting usa.canon.com