Photo quality

Canon PowerShot SX1 is very fast camera in its compact ultrazoom class. After 1.2 seconds upon we pressed On button and it was fully operational. Autofocus is also very fast with great dynamic range. Noise control is not something that this model will be remembered for. Small CMOS sensor is the main culprit for slightly higher noise levels. At ISO 80 values there is almost no noise but at ISO 100 is getting visible. Up to ISO 400 noise levels are bearable but at higher ISO levels (800 and 1600) photos are almost unusable. If you plan to make 10x15cm photos with this camera, noise levels shouldn’t bother you too much even if you shoot with ISO 400. Because Canon used CMOS sensor in SX1 IS model that can make 4 photos per second while SX10 IS model with CCD sensor can achieve only 1.4 photos per second. This fact is very important when photographing fast moving objects. In combination with Servo focus very interesting results can be achieved but in that case autofocus is locked so you should pay attention to that fact also. If you want to autofocus after each shot then you can take up to 1.1 photos per second.
Another consequence of the fact that PowerShot SX1 IS has CMOS sensor is ability to record video in Full HD resolution (1900x1080). We should mention that videos are recorded in H264 format, and that one second of video takes up to 5MB on your SD memory card. If you plan to use this camera for taking videos prepare to invest into one big and fast SD memory card. Videos taken on bright and shiny day are perfect. When we made some videos in not so perfect lightning conditions a lot of noise has started to appear but this was expected. Only problem that we encountered with video recording was slow focusing on rapid zoom. If you record video with focus on object that is close and then relatively fast move camera and zoom on object that is far away, you can expect that 5-6 seconds pass before camera actually focus on that distant object. Since all compact zoom cameras have problems with chromatic aberrations Canon SX1 IS isn’t exception. On segments of picture with high contrast levels (three branches on white sky) chromatic aberrations are very noticeable.

Image Stabilization does its job perfectly and without IS it would be impossible to take pictures in maximum zoom mode. Image Stabilization is also used when recording videos where it also helps in creating better image quality.

One of the problems that we encountered with this model is aperture size. With focus change, values for aperture from f2.8 were used up to 34mm, f3.2 up to 50mm and f5.0 starts at low 168mm (f5.7 for 460-560mm). Image Stabilization makes shots with these settings possible when shooting from hand so this is not actually too serious issue.