We saw quite a few camera announcements last week, but we missed mentioning one, with Canon outing a new PowerShot sporting an impressive 30x optical zoom in a palm-sized camera.
Ahead of the upcoming tech shows in Europe where the latest tech gear will be shown – IFA and Photokina – Canon has taken the opportunity to talk up a new camera that will be hitting Australian store shelves in the next few weeks.
The latest in the company’s long running PowerShot series of cameras, the SX500 IS brings with it a small size and a long lens, pairing the 341 gram pocket camera with a lens capable of bringing the equivalent of 24 to 720mm, with a close-up 1cm macro shooting distance here in this camera too.
Canon also has a piece of technology called “ZoomPlus” which it says will let you reach an optical zoom of 60x in SX500, or roughly equivalent to a maximum length of 1440mm, which is longer than pretty much any camera out there. We’re not sure how good ZoomPlus is, with Canon pointing out that the technology works through “optimised image processing” which we’re presuming means interpolation.
Still, the camera features image stabilisation, allowing customers to get the most out of that long lens, with a 16 megapixel CCD sensor allowing you to capture images and HD movies (no Full HD here).
As with most Canon news lately, there’s no official recommended retail price, but we’d put the SX500 IS under $500 when it hits shelves in mid-September.
