I think i bought a piece of **** from Canon :(

[Ivan]

Hi.

I recently replaced a very aging Canon S50 5MP camera as it was starting to get some wear and tear and also the size and weight was starting to get annoying, you know that feeling when everyone pulls out a compact thing sand you pull out the dinosaur.

So i did some research, and i was happy with canon (despite hearing about nikon and panasonic) canon still seem to have some excellent cameras and after using cnet to read some reviews - http://www.cnet.com.au/canon-ixus-120-is-339297963.htm and it got the editors award i decided to grab this.

Interestingly i read the user reviews, all of them, most peoples complaints didn't bother me .. like how long it took to take a picture, but one guy ripped into it saying "very poor quality photos even on the highest resolution setting. Most times the photos are blurry or have lots of digital noise. Colors are not as vibrant and bit saturated than other brands like Nikon. Also you Can't change the default settings of the 'Auto' function, so the camera will try to do things when you don't want it to. Sometimes, even my phone camera (Nokia N95 8GB)takes better quality photos than this camera. The HD video is ok i guess but if you need to take video its probably better to just get a video camera instead, cause this take up massive memory. Overall, as a camera for photos, I don't think its as good as cnet rates this to be. I think they rate this so high because of the HD video."

Since his comments stood alone compared to most other reviews, i didn't pay as much attention, you know, if everyone said it .. i'd understand.

After using the S50 for years, i instantly noticed, this guy was right, images are simply ... not sharp, full of noise and generally just a mess, i mean for 12MP, i expected to see leaves on a tree when i snapped it, instead it just look like my old camera on a blown up page...

I wonder if i'm missing something, does anyone have one of these cameras and they are happy with it, maybe you have some custom setting you use to get the most from this camera and screw the auto setting.
I'm tempted to see if the company i bought it from will accept a refund and i get something else, though i'd rather keep it at this stage and not go through that painful process.

Should i maybe not snap at the highest resolution? should i switch off auto and set an ISO to 100 (a setting that did produce a better image?) etc etc as i'm usually just an "auto" guy but maybe its time to learn a bit more, or have i just bought a terrible camera and nothing i can do?

EDIT: I had an assumption i would like ot add, my S50 cost me nearly $1000 9 years ago, i figured a $300 camera 9 years later would be better than a 9 year old $1000 camera, wrong assumption? When i'm ready for a $1000 camera, ill go DSLR but i need something compact and handy but still awesome in the meantime.

[TheScientist]

yeah, my mrs had a 6MP ixus that took nice photos for a point and shoot/simple camera (and my old 3.5MP canon does too).

She dropped hers on a beach and the sand did it's work to the lens mechanism, so updated to a newer one about 8 or 9MP or something, sounds similar to what you got: it's nowhere near as good as either of our old ones, except that it has more pixels making up essentially the same image. I think it's still a bit better than my now quite old camera, but I don't like the photos it takes as much for their colours aside from anything else.

[jpeyper]

for what its worth, eb games sell a $65 10mp benq camera and by all reports its absolutely fantastic*.

none of these reports come from photographers, just people taking holiday snaps and whatnot.

so if your looking for something small, light and cheapish that you can just snap a good image*, you could try on of those. at $65 you couldnt go far wrong*.


* i am not a professional (or even good) photographer and i do not claim to know anything about the subject. this camera may be rubbish compared to your current camera.

[holo`]

What you've probably encountered is a fairly new phenomenon. The older cameras had slightly larger censors, and less megapixels, so they took sharp photographs that were free of noise.

New cameras generally have much smaller censors and more megapixels, which means that the overall image quality is worse.

My personal advice: do some research on the size of the censor in whatever compact you want and get one that has a larger than normal censor. Sure the camera will be slightly larger (and require more power to operate) but the pictures produce will be of a much, much higher quality.

[Mugsy]

Yeah, my new Sony HX5V is fairly noisy compared to older compacts our family has had. Samsung S630 was more sharper (but the lens was soft on one side). My bro's Canon Powershot A95 was probably the best of the lot. Sharp shots every time.

Of course, these days I'm spoiled with using a DSLR but I do admit the HX5V is a very convenient automatic and feature packed camera and the image quality in good light conditions is decent (despite the fact that you know that the camera has done some automatic post processing).

[Atmosphere]

never worry about the megapixels unless your going to do some serious prints or blow up the pictures into photos.

All of todays camera's have adequate MP's. It's all about the sensor and processor.

I don't know what your budget was but i'm looking at getting the Sony Nex 3. This thing has a DSLR sensor with 720p video recording and interchangable lense but with a Point and shoot body (and unfortunately a point and shoot menu system as well), i'm getting it as my walk about camera so i have something to carry around with me most of the time which simply cannot be done with my canon 50d + lens'.

SENSOR SENSOR SENSOR.

also read reviews from dpreview.com as they are very thorough with their reviews of camera's