Product Review : The Canon PowerShot SX230 HS Digital Camera

One thing is clear: My two year old Vivitar ViviCam 8025 is no Canon PowerShot SX230 HS. True, they're both digital cameras, but that's where the similarities end.

The Vivitar was purchased in late 2009 from Sears for something like $120. That included a sizeable storage card and a carrying case. The little camera was a cool red color, lightweight, a joy to carry, and a pain in the photographic derriere.

Why did I want an upgrade almost immediately? Let me count the ways:

1. The viewscreen was terribly underpowered. In sunlight, it appeared to the naked eye as a blank, black mini-wall. Every outdoor photo taken (except at night or under heavy cloud cover) was literally "shot blind".

2. The lens would not focus crisply at any closer range than two feet, give or take an inch.

3. The digital zoom lens was worse than worthless in that it distorted images wildly. A round full moon at full 10x magnification came out long, curved, and with "corners".

4. After the shutter was pressed, there was a significant delay before the picture was actually taken.

Yes, the cheap red camera saw a lot of use and contributed a lot of photos to my Hubs for two full years and change. But with a more balanced budget this month than we'd had for some time...yeah. Canon PowerShot. Gimme.

Why the Canon specifically?

Simple enough: During the Palominas Christmas Parade one year, a fellow photographer noticed me taking snapshots of the various floats and asked if I'd use her camera to take a picture of her with her float. That was the first and only time I'd even seen a Canon PowerShot close up...and I was impressed.

However, I'd not seen one in the stores in Sierra Vista until today. Nothing much at Wal-Mart. Mostly garbage-ola at Sears.

Target. That one, I'd never checked out. But after my wife had found a great nesting place among the various racks of women's clothes, it was my turn to head on over to the rest of the store. Do a bit of browsing, doncha know.

Hm. Great looking selection of digital cameras, and--three different Canon PowerShots? And the pick of the litter, the SX230 HS is on sale, $80 off? Well, kiss my wallet and call me a spendthrift; it's time to take the plunge. Camera: $249. Storage card (8 megs): $15. Case: $11. Total including usurious sales tax: A bit over $300.

Once home with the magic beans, it was time to find out just how good this image-clicker might actually be. For instance, would it focus "up close and personal"?

Yep. The photo of my hand holding the needle nose pliers was taken at a range of a whopping nine inches, give or take a centimeter.

Before long, I just had to see if the Canon could take a picture of itself in a mirror (a very dirty mirror, as it turned out).

Piece of cake.

By this time, the clock had rolled on well into the evening. How about super-low light, no flash pics? Doable?

The photo of Kitten Precious was also taken by the light of a 40 watt bulb, but the bulb was clear across the room in a lamp sitting atop the clothes dryer. How far...about twelve feet away. One 40 watt bulb, a good twelve feet away.

Dim but doable.

Impressed yet? I know I am.

Screen shots? Why not. There are two here. One is a snap of the Hubbers page 1. The lower part of the screen overexposed a bit...but it's legible even though faded. The upper portion is crisp and clear.

The Vivitar always blurred those HP screen shots.

The other screen shot is of Gato cat when he was a two month old kitten. The original shot was taken with the Vivitar, set as desktop background on the computer, and then screen-snapped with the Canon.

Now for the real test: How about that zoom lens?

The Canon PowerShot SX230 HS comes with a 14x optical zoom (nice and heavy and very impressive-feeling in the hand and to the eye). In addition to that, however, the 14x magnification can be multiplied by a factor of 4 digitally.

That's right: At the far end of the scale, you can crank this puppy up to 56x magnification.

Not that you'd want to try snapping shots at that setting without a tripod...but it just so happens we have one of those.

Time to see about a moon shot PowerShot.

The result (below) speaks for itself.

Clearly, this is one serious picture-taking machine. Now, a few housekeeping details:

1. I'll have to get a different camera case before taking this little beauty out into the dusty desert for very long. The case the saleslady sold me...doesn't fit the camera.

Oops.

2. The disk drive on my PC has been jammed for months (don't ask), so there's no way to load the CD with the main camera manual and the camera driver. No worries on the manual; it's not likely to be needed (there's a Quck Start mini-manual in the shipping box).

But the driver? Hmm....

3. Heeding the warning that came with the USB cable to not connect camera to computer before installing driver, I checked online. Downloaded a driver. Got no driver but did get 5 malware "goodies" and a program that refused to be deleted.

Dumbo.

4. Kicked the stubborn program outa Dodge by using System Restore. So there!

5. Flipped the bird at the warning, hooked the camera up directly--and the camera loaded the driver just fine without needing the CD in any way, shape, or form.

Just thought you might want to know all that.

Evaluation of the Canon PowerShot SX230 HS digital camera: A+++.

It doesn't get any better than this.