Ultra zoom anyone?

So I got my mom a new digital camera for mother's day. I got her the Canon SX200 which is one of the new fangled cameras in a class called ultra zoom. Which is really optical zoom that is 10x or better. Now remember this is optical zoom so it's how the camera sees the subject not the digital zoom which is a pile of crap and no one ever uses digital zoom unless they're desprate.

But the 12x zoom on this camaera is pretty amazing it's as advertized and very good, the image stabilization is very good at the 12x becuase the further the zoom the harder it is to keep the subject stable and not get a blury picture with out a tripod.

This is a bit bigger than your normal point and shoot, it's just small enough to be able to haul it with you everywhere but not small enough to bit your pocket (unless you have big pockets).

It has a cool hide zoom and the lens almost sits flush with the rest of the body so there are no protruding parts which makes it nice to tuck away when you're not using it.

The other cool thing about this camera is the HD video recording capability at 720p. I tried to video and it's records very nice video in good to moderate light. In low light it's about as good as any other pocket HD video recorder. The other downer is that the video recording mode doesn't take advantage of the 12x zoom. But overall very good clear video and will work for most people's situations.

Has your typical canon optics and Digic photo processing chip. However I was a bit dissapointed with the quality of the pictures. While they are nice looking pictures I wasn't as wowed as I typically am, although I only used the SX200 only a few minutes the few sample pics I took were of average quality.

These are my first impressions of this camera and it's more of a niche camera. If you're looking for good quality, ultra zoom with nice HD video recording capbablity this is a good camera. But it's on the larger size and not as portable as one may need. If you need something small, takes good pics has a HD video recording mode and don't need the ultra zoom I'd suggest the Canon SD 780 IS this is a great little camera and less than $280.

Got questions email me: richmlee@gmail.com