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Canon PowerShot SX120IS 10MP Digital Camera with 10x Optical Images Stabilized Zoom and 3-inch LCD |  | Brand: Canon
Category: Photography
Department: Electronics
Buy Refurbished: $164.47
as of 9/6/2010 08:08 CDT details
New (32) Used (12) Refurbished (4) from $164.47
Seller: PlusDigUSA
Rating:  151 reviews
Sales Rank: 49
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: Yes
Optical Zoom: 10
Display Size: 3
Battery: 2 AA
Maximum Resolution: 10
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 4.4 x 2.8 x 1.8
Legal Disclaimer: We do not in any way represent that any part we sell is legal to possess in your jurisdiction. Check with you local authorities to ensure it is legal for you to possess before buying!
MPN: SX120IS
Model: SX120IS
UPC: 013803114201
EAN: 0013803114201
ASIN: B002LITT3S
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | High-powered 10x wide-angle optical zoom with Optical Image Stabilizer | | • | 3.0-inch PureColor System LCD; Smart AUTO detects and analyzes faces, brightness, colors, distance, and movement | | • | Easy Mode takes all the guesswork out of the equation by determining the right shooting mode | | • | DIGIC 4 Image Processor; 10-megapixel resolution for poster-size, photo-quality prints | | • | Powered by AA batteries (included); capture images to SD/SDHC memory cards (not included) |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
- 10.0 Megapixels- 10x optical zoom with optical image stabilizer-3.0 LCD- DIGIC(R) 4 image processor-Smart auto intelligently selects the proper setting for the camera based on 22 predefined shooting situations-Easy mode takes the guess work out of the equation by determining the right shooting mode for the situation- Requires AA batteries
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 151
 A Rank Amateur's Review September 18, 2009
Mary Kate (Wisconsin, USA)
336 out of 347 found this review helpful
I can't write an in depth review of this camera because I simply don't have the knowledge of either cameras or photography. But I can tell you what I, as a rank amateur, like about it and why I chose it.
I have grandkids. I needed a camera that would allow me to capture decent pictures of them - and in a digital format - so that I can, like all good grandparents, brag about my grandkids via email and attach photos to prove that they are the cutest kids on the face of the earth.
I had my "good" camera - an old Pentax K1000 that I've had for about 30 years - and a small, inexpensive digital camera that I got a few years ago and have never been happy with. Not only was the Pentax not digital, it also turns out that the grandkids can move much faster than I can focus. And that camera purchased as my first attempt at digital just wasn't cutting it. It was overly complicated and with it I wasn't getting pictures good enough to share.
I gave my needs some thought and made the following criteria list:
Easy to use.
Fast shutter speed.
Easy to use.
Small enough to fit into my purse easily.
Easy to use.
My needs were simple and I didn't think it would be too hard to find a camera to fit the bill. Happily, I was right.
After my initial research had convinced me to go with a Canon, I borrowed my brother's Rebel (don't know the model number) and my son's Canon PowerShot Pro Series S5 IS. I knew that neither fit my criteria (not to mention the $500-$700 price range was more than I wanted to spend), but using them for a few days gave me the opportunity to check out some of Canon's features.
That's how I discovered the Optical Image Stabilizer. I can see from reviews of other cameras that it's been around for a few years, but I'd never used it before. It immediately went to the top of my list of desired features - even above "easy to use"!
I have a tremor condition that causes fine shaking in my hands. It doesn't bother me and doesn't always affect close work, but it can make holding something steady - say, for instance, a camera - almost impossible. As you can guess, the result of that shakiness when snapping photos is, most often, crappy photos.
Canon's Optical Image Stabilizer was like a miracle for me. With it, I could take close ups that were startlingly clear - not every time, of course, but MOST times. And, in combination with a fast shutter speed, the Image Stabilizer helped me to get some great shots - even action shots - of my test subject, my dog.
With my adjusted criteria list, I did some more research that led me to the Canon PowerShot SX120IS 10MP. One of Canon's newer models, the PowerShot SX120IS puts ease of use in the forefront of its advertising. It fit all of my criteria and at a decent price.
I haven't had this camera for very long, but I'm already thrilled with it. The Easy Mode is actually EASY! What a concept! The LCD screen is larger than what I've used previously and makes it easier for me to judge if the picture I just took is relatively clear. The Image Stabilizer continues to be my new best friend.
Good points:
IMAGE STABLIZER!!
Fast shutter speed
Genuinely easy to use
Small size
Decent price
Bad points:
I'm so happy with my choice that I can't think of any right now!
If I was a serious photographer, I may well have chosen a more comprehensive camera (with all those features and symbols only serious photographers can decipher). But for my level of use and my personal needs, this one does a terrific job and didn't overly strain the budget. Yeah!
Recommended.
Great Camera, though a bit noisy September 16, 2009
William Kerney (San Diego, CA)
195 out of 200 found this review helpful
My needs for a camera are as follows:
1) It needs to fit in my pocket
2) It needs to turn on quickly
3) It needs to shoot "decent enough" photos on auto mode
4) It needs to have enough options to tweak lighting settings.
5) It should have both good indoor and outdoor performance.
6) I'd like something that can do automatic exposure bracketing or otherwise support HDR photography.
I've gone through various cameras over the years, and have borrowed some others to mess around with, and until last week was using a Canon A620, which was a surprisingly good camera, capable of taking shots as good as a DSLR, especially when tweaked correctly. It also could do automatic exposure bracketing for HDR photography when using the CHDK firmware for it. Then I accidentally left my A620 on a bench on South Beach when visiting last week, and so I suddenly found myself in the market for a new camera.
I was seriously looking into the Fuji 200EXR and the Ricoh CX2 for the HDR photography mode, but they didn't have the tweakability settings I liked... the 200EXR was great except it always blew out the ISO levels to compensate for its limited image stabilization capabilities, which made auto mode shots almost always unacceptably grainy. I ended up settling on the SX120IS because it matches all my needs except for HDR photography. That, I'll hold off on until a new generation or two of HDR cameras has come and gone.
It has very good low-light performance, as long as you're willing to put up with a certain amount of graininess Indoors, with the curtains drawn and just a couple normal lamps lighting the living room, it was able to take quite decent photos at ISO200. Without a flash. The IS was quite helpful in this regard, and the only downside was that the image had a noticeable level of noise in it. This will bother some people. Myself - I'm happy that it doesn't do what most P&S cameras do, which is reduce the shutter speed to such a low level that everything blurs into nothingness. This is rather the opposite - quite crisp images with no blur, but you pay for it with a little bit of noise. I'm fine with that, really. I never carry a tripod, instead carrying it around in my pocket whenever I travel, and I like to be able to whip it out and photograph something on the spot, indoors or out.
The camera turns on quite quickly, and the auto mode does a generally decent job for taking those quick shots that would otherwise pass you by (the bird posing on the branch). The camera also has a the right amount of manual settings for tweaking your shots just the way you want them. (Another poster on here complained it was too complicated for him, and I suppose that could be a fair criticism, but for me it's the right level of complexity.) Like with my other Canon, it allows you to tweak ISO, aperture priority, time priority, or all three, as well as something the A620 couldn't do - a manual focus setting, which has been quite fun to play around with.
As far as all the vaunted features on this camera (auto face recognition, Digic 4, etc.), I didn't really notice it taking photos noticeably different from my A620. Image quality was about the same with the experimentation I did replicating several shots around the neighborhood. However, since I had no complaints about the A620, this is not a criticism. The one thing I do miss, though, is the flip out viewfinder. I much prefer a viewfinder that can flip around for self-portraits, or flip backwards to protect itself over the always-out LCD viewfinders which always get scratched up very quickly. But all of them are that way nowadays, so I am not really complaining that much about it.
All in all, a great camera.
Edit: After more experience with the camera (I've taken several thousand shots with this camera in different settings now), I have an update to this review.
1) The SD card is very inconveniently located under the unwieldy battery door - I much prefer separate memory card doors on my cameras, so I can pop it out and into a computer easily.
2) The smallish sensor size is not fully compensated for with the IS system. It has the noise of my previous camera at two ISO settings higher, and the auto mode tends to take shots in much higher ISO settings than needed, meaning you need to manually control the ISO mode most of the time, which is a minor annoyance.
3) The zoom lens on this camera rocks. Much better than most P&S camera zoom lenses. It makes a 100 yard shot look like it is 10 feet away, with no visible distortion or chromatic aberration. Macro shots also look very nice.
4) At first I was annoyed by the wheel on the back of the camera, since it would tend to move when trying to push up or down, but it does make browsing through lots of old photos a snap.
5) I've seen some people complaining about the fact that the SX120IS has a manual pop-up flash, whereas the higher level SX200IS model (which my father has, and I've used) automatically pops up the flash when you turn the camera on. However, believe me when I say that I greatly prefer the manual popup - it means you never take a flash photo when you don't want to. And flash sucks for a lot of shots since it wipes out depth in a photo and annoys people, like curators at museum. The camera knows the flash is disabled, and sets its properties accordingly. You can manually disable flash on other cameras, but if you set those cameras to auto mode, a lot of models will automatically re-enable the flash. With this camera, it'll never happen. I love it.
6) I don't quite like the form factor on the camera. It seems easier to drop than other Canons that I've used.
7) Being able to turn on auto-histograming and zebra highlighting over- and under-exposed parts of a photo on every shot out of the box is a very nice feature. I used to have to use CHDK to enable that on my older Canon.
Great camera for the advanced photographer that's all about control November 10, 2009
RLSd (Minnesota USA)
25 out of 25 found this review helpful
The Canon Sx120 is for the advanced photographer who wants more control than the typical digital camera, but without the extra bulk or price. I got this camera after having used the previous SX100 and Sx110 and some DSLRs. The main upgrade from the past is the DIGIC IV processor and the noise reduction at ISO 800 and 1600. In the previous SX models the noise was pretty bad, specks of odd color pixels were very obvious at high ISO, but with the SX120's new NR processing, it's a noticeable improvement. Granted it's not DSLR level, but very usable for a compact digital camera. All the other features are just minor tweaks from the previous models.
This is a great camera for the money. It allows manual operation of aperture, shutter speed, even flash intensity (which comes in useful for optically triggering off-camera flashes). I wish more compact cameras allowed this kind of control for creative shooting. The aperture operation isn't like some other manufacturers that only have 2 settings, wide and small. It actually has increments in 1/3 stop steps which gives great control. One other feature you can't find in any other value compact digital camera is how fast the lens is. I mean how much light it lets in even when zoomed in (f2.8-f4.3). This allows faster shutter speeds to freeze the action in dimly lit areas. Most cameras have tiny lenses that lets even less light through when zoomed in, this makes the camera turn up the ISO (more noise), or slows the shutter speed (more blur). The Canon SX120 has a big enough lens to counter these effects. Even the new Canon SX200 has compromised in this area of the lens.
Other nice features of this camera I like are being able to adjust contrast, saturation, and sharpness of images. I prefer to turn these down as much as possible to capture the most data at first, I can post-process the pictures later on a computer if I wanted (alternative when RAW isn't availble).
This camera has so many great little things about it. I'll just list them here for completeness sake. It has great image quality, a lot of control for the user, intuitive interface, adequate performance speed for the category, uses convenient & greener AA batteries. I just have a few minor gripes that would make this an even better camera:
1) Super-fine JPG mode is not available anymore, I wish the JPG compression was more adjustable.
2) The Zoom level is not precisely displayed. I prefer an equivalent focal length display instead of an ambiguous zoom bar that only appears for a second or two when the zoom is activated.
3) Flash recharge is slow, but it's to be expected since it uses AA batteries. This really isn't so bad since I don't use flash very much because the camera is able to take good photos in low-light with the big lens and good high ISO performance along with the optical image stabilizer. I get good performance out of the camera using slow-discharge NiMH batteries (don't get the high mAH rating ones, they have a high self-discharge rate).
4) There's no way to turn off the auto-lens retraction when playing back images, which resets the settings when I turn the camera back on to shoot again (I have to readjust my zoom level and exposure compensation settings for example.)
5) Wide-angle isn't very wide at 36mm EFL, I prefer a bit wider and give up some in the telephoto end, while keeping the same lens performance.
6) Video recording is ok (640x480 in mJPEG), optical zoom disabled while recording. I dont' take a lot of videos and figured this camera is really for taking creative still photos. So it's an ok compromise for me.
Great for the all purpose September 8, 2009
V. Jain (USA)
41 out of 44 found this review helpful
I am a beginner and I got suddenly interest in taking great pictures. So I was looking for a camera that has high zoom, manual controls as well as auto controls. When I started searching for good camera reviews I shortlisted 4- 5 cameras that included canon sd1100,sd770, Sony DSC H20 and canon sx100 is. The first two were point and shoot and had all functionality that I was looking for other then some manual, but less optical zoom. Sony and canon both were good but I chose to go for canon as it has lots of shooting options.
I was looking to buy sx110is (sx100is 's successor) and then I got a news that sx120is is released. I was not sure whether to take the older one or get the new one who has not been rated. But I bought this and I am happy with it. It is not that much heavier then other cameras with good optical zoom. though comparing to Panasonic's lumix, it is heavier.
It has great functionality such as:
*Easy to use. if you just want to say with auto selection then that also gives you best pictures.
*face detection, that is very useful while taking self picture. Detects up to 9 face at a time.
* continuous shooting , like taking 3 pictures simultaneously at fast speed.
* iso 3200
* 10x optical zoom, 40x digital zoom.
* 15 shooting mode
* sunset,sun rise detection,
* Great functionality in video shooting like zoom out, zoom in.
* manual controls,you can set shutter speed, Av, Tv mode.
* Image stabilizer.
* Big LCD screen in which display picture rotates according to holders direction i.e while displaying pictures, if you are holding camera horizontal it sets picture automatically horizontal.
* We can focus picture first and then can take pictures.
the only thing is that it doesn't have a viewfinder. some people might not like it but it doesn't matter for me as far as I can see what I am taking , what is in focus through LCD. Also it requires AA battery that has its own plus and minus point, but it requires only 2 AA batteries and can take 200 to 300 snaps.That is good enough.The flash is not automatic. you have to fire it manually,it has its plus minus too.Too much auto pop of flash might frustrate some one, or some might want auto flash, but camera detects and let you know that this picture requires flash so you can raise the flash, not bad!!
It can fit in pocket so not bad then any other point and shoot.
I took some pictures from it while I was learning its functionality. I took some on low resolutions. That can not give justice to camera, later I got some great pictures by learning some mode. Here it is: [...]
The camera is working perfectly till now.
I will sure recommend this to any one. Good one for who wants to start exploring photography.
Good for Amatuer and Advavced users. EZ Controls. October 7, 2009
Larry Wolford (Washington State)
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
As a Good Amatuer who carried Japanese Analog Camera's for 40 years,and now have tried 6 Digital camera's,including Panasonic's DMC-TZ5,I must say: "Wow!" Very simple to understand instructions , plus straight forward controls, and even the in "Auto" mode it produces XLNT results( very good brain input integration). But in the Creative modes of "Apeture and "Shutter Priority" you can do Professional work. The Nickel Hydride "AA" batteries and their large capacity, work very well in this Camera. All Camera's I have seen/tried in this price range have some noise over 400 ISO. Sometimes I read reviews of those who have bought High Res. Camera's, but have no way to view the better resolution result, because their Monitor is limited. Thus their disappointment in better and higher resolution camera purchases is a result of their reviewing source. This Camera will not disapppoint those "who know their stuff." Amatuers will apprecate it's "Brain." Buy this Camera! A wonderful bargain in my opinion.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 151
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