Image Quality And Value For Money

Image Quality
The SX10’s picture quality doesn’t disappoint. Despite its massive 28-560mm zoom range the lens performs well, with excellent centre sharpness providing an exceptionally high level of fine detail for the 10.0MP sensor.
There is a little barrel distortion at the wide–angle end, as well as a little chromatic aberration towards the edges of the frame at all focal lengths, but thankfully it avoids the pincushion distortion that plagues some superzoom models, and the overall picture quality is very good.

Dynamic range is also surprisingly good for a camera that, after all, only has the same sized sensor as a pocket compact. It dose have a tendency to over-expose slightly in backlit or similarly high contrast situations, and it does capture a lot of shadow detail, albeit at the cost of some burned-out highlights.

Image noise too is well handled, with good picture quality up to ISO 200 and Canon’s usual reduction system providing a slightly grainy but still well-detailed result at higher settings. Image quality at the maximum setting of ISO 1600 is not so good however, with very blurred detail and rather de-saturated colour.

Value For Money
With its retail price hovering around £280, the SX10 IS is by no means a cheap camera, but then top-end bridge cameras are all expensive. Even compared to its main rivals, such as the Panasonic FZ28 (£245), Olympus SP-570 UZ (£245) and Nikon P80 (£250) it might seem pricey, but then those competitors can’t match the SX10’s impressive video performance. It’s one of the few still cameras that can come close to matching a dedicated camcorder, so in that respect it looks like better value for money. For anyone looking for a versatile Jack-of-all-trades camera that can do almost anything, it’s certainly a hard one to beat.