8 Go-Travelin’ Features of the Canon Powershot SX260 Digital Camera

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PowerShot_SX260 image 1. The Canon Powershot SX260 digital camera is the company’s entry in the early 2012 travel photography camera competition that also includes the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS20, Fujifilm FinePix F770EXR, Nikon Coolpix S9300 and others. The Powershot SX260 is a good combination of quality metal and plastic parts, which is to be expected from Canon. The company’s designers have also given it beveled edges and rounded corners for a contemporary look in black, red or green.

Read real customer reviews of the Canon Powershot SX260 here.

2. Canon has found a good compromise between a compact camera that still fits in a pocket and a bit additional weight and size to accommodate the SX260’s upgraded capabilities. At 4.19 x 2.4 x 1.29” (106.43 c 60.96 x 32.77mm), the SX260 has a slim feel in your hand, but solid at a light 8.15 oz. (230g).

3. It seems that where these travel photography cameras like to compete is the focal length range of their ultra-zoom lenses. The Powershot SX260 doesn’t have the largest, but it is all virtually any digital photographer will ever need. The 20x zoom lens delivers the equivalent of 25–500mm in 35mm format. At the wide-angle end, there are plenty of imaginative landscape and architectural photos possible and the 500mm end allows for great street photography without being noticed.

4. GPS is essentially a requirement for today’s travel photographer and the Canon Powershot SX260 doesn’t disappoint. The GPS unit in this camera offers various capabilities, including an upgraded Logger function that maps your travels for as much as 48 hours without the need to recharge the batteries. The Map Utility software is part of the complete camera accessory kit. The software is used to upload images to Google Maps and also gives you a view of journey from location to location.

5. The SX260 comes with a 12.1-megapixel, back-illuminated CMOS sensor that, in combination, with the Digic V processor, increases the operational speed and image quality. Another advantage of the processor is that it enables 10.3fps in high-speed Burst mode at 12-megapixel resolution.

6. Your passion for travel photography can lead you into a wide variety of shooting and lighting environments, so Canon has given the Powershot SX260 an exceptional 3-inch, 460,000-dot widescreen format LCD display. It’s bright and reveals details in midday sunlight or at night. Resolution is set at 4:3 ratio, but automatically changes to 16:9 when shooting HD video with audio in stereo. This mimics the look of video on a PC monitor or flat-screen TV.

7. The SX260 scores very high for video recording in a travel compact camera, with 1080p Full-HD at 24fps and the aforementioned stereo sound. The entire range of the 20x zoom lens can be utilized during moviemaking. Access the shooting mode dial and select the Movie Digest mode. It records as much as 4 seconds of video before you ask for a still image. At the end of the day, this mode will combine all the stills and video footage into a continuous VGA segment, so you can review all the images in a time-lapse segment.

8. Independent testing of the SX260’s image quality reveals a very good rating, with hard-to-recognize noise and color loss to ISO 800; but the range to ISO 1,600 still produces highly acceptable images. Until you shoot high-contrast photos, you won’t see any purple fringing, or chromatic aberration, and then only at the edges. Macro images were also judged to be considerably above average with a closest focus of just less than 2 inches (5cm).

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