Touchscreen technology is old news in the
digital camera industry, thanks to Sony, but Canon didn't release their first touchscreen digital camera until last year. The SD3500 IS put Canon on the map, particularly geared for point-and-shooters who wanted a great Auto camera that was easy to use. The Canon PowerShot Elph 500 HS is the SD3500's sequel, and it's packed with many of the same upgrades found on its siblings, the PowerShot Elph 300 HS and SX230 HS. Canon's prey within the point-and-shoot forest has been low light, and the PowerShot Elph 500 spends most of its mod money on making sure shots remain exposed and focused when the lights go down. The Canon PowerShot Elph 500 HS also receives a few other choice upgrades like 1080p and new Image Effects, so let's break them all down in our full review.
Design
Oddly, the Canon PowerShot Elph 500 HS is actually styled after the SD4500 IS, yet contains the same external control layout as the PowerShot SD3500 IS. The only difference is that Canon migrated the Playback button to the side panel on the back of the camera, where it sits peculiarly out of place from the rest of the controls found on top, including a Shutter button zoom toggle and Auto/Camera switch. The Elph 500 HS has an HDMI terminal and A/V out jack, and the camera accepts SD/SDHC/SDXC cards.
But the most profound difference was the Elph 500 HS's diminutive size when compared to the SD3500 IS. While Canon whittled down the dimensions on the Elph 500 HS to make it more pocket friendly, they sacrificed a small percentage of LCD real estate, throttling from a nice 3.5-inch screen to a 3.2-inch display. The Canon PowerShot Elph 500 HS retains the same 461,000-pixel resolution, which provides a crisp picture, and its touchscreen sensitivity was unchanged from last year. Here, we wanted to see improved sensitivity, but we still ran into a few glitches in the capacitive technology.
We also got a 24mm wide-angle lens with a 4.4x optical zoom—slashed from the previous 5x optical zoom found on the SD3500 IS. Overall, not much has changed for the Canon PowerShot Elph 500 HS aside from a size cut and style alteration.
Shooting Features
We commented on the fact that the SD3500 IS lacked sufficient manual controls, categorizing it as more of a true Auto machine than anything. But the Canon PowerShot Elph 500 HS is granted with TV (Shutter Priority) and AV (Aperture Priority) modes, which cater to the more advanced point-and-shooters out there. We also loved the Elph 500 HS's aperture range of f/2.0 – f/8.0, the widest aperture out of the company's new releases this winter. The camera's shutter speed reached down to 15 seconds, making our long exposure shooting worthwhile. However, we experienced the same ISO cap on the Elph 500 HS as we did on the SX230 HS. Anything past 1-second will default to ISO 100, meaning you can't for instance set the camera to a 4-second shutter speed and adjust the ISO to 400 for a little more sensitivity. Because of this, we felt a bit limited, but most owners of the Elph 500 HS will most likely not be long exposure shooters.
Speaking of ISO, the Canon PowerShot Elph 500 HS gets a boost in max ISO adjustment, making the ceiling ISO 3200, compared to the PowerShot SD3500 IS's 1600 cap. This is because of the camera's HS sensor, which we'll get to in a bit. But in other news, we found the Auto mode on the Elph 500 HS to be one of the best in the industry, choosing from 32 predefined scenes, compared to last year's 22 scenes. Auto Focus is fantastic, and we could activate Focus Tracking by simply tapping anywhere on the screen. If you're the type of shooter that never lets the Mode switch wander from Auto, then this camera is an ideal choice. We did get the new Toy Camera and Monochrome filters, as well as the Movie Digest mode. Found on all new PowerShots this year, Canon's Movie Digest mode allowed us to capture 4 seconds of video every time we snapped a still image, leading to a video montage that could be played back with heartwarming music and dashing transitions.
These were all welcome additions to Canon's second touchscreen point-and-shooter, though our overall touchscreen experience remained the same. Menus were well organized and easy to follow with descriptions of each option. Playback allowed us to swipe images from side-to-side and single-tap to zoom. We'd love to see Canon obtain the rights for a pinch-to-zoom technology, but that might be a while. In the end, the Canon PowerShot Elph 500 HS does not have what it takes when we stack it up against mid to high-end smartphones, so if you're looking for that type of sensitivity, you won't find it on the Elph 500 HS. The camera does have one of the best touchscreens in the business though, and is right up there with Sony's best.
Still Image Quality
The Canon PowerShot Elph 500 HS receives the same 12.1-megapixel 1/2.3-inch CMOS sensor as found in the new Elph 300 HS and SX230 HS. What does that mean? All three cameras exhibit nearly identical image quality, so camera choice is only limited to form factor. The only difference we have with the PowerShot Elph 500 HS is that it has the widest aperture out of the trio with an f/2.0. Because of that, the PowerShot Elph 500 HS gave us the edge in low light. Out of the three we tested, the Elph 500 HS won in the low light department because it mimicked the internals of the Canon PowerShot SD4000 IS, which was one of our top low light compacts.
However, when it came to bright light, we approached our testing a bit differently. Every bright light image, aside from the Filters, was shot in Auto mode. Since the Canon
PowerShot Elph 500 HS is geared toward the hardcore point-and-shooter, we thought we'd shoot like one. Well, the results were not as exciting as we would have hoped for. The camera tends to boost the ISO every chance it gets. Many of the landscape images you'll see below lack a significant about of detail while Macros are crisp and defined. If anything, our Auto Mode jaunt is proof that shooting in Program AE with a low ISO is the way to go with any Canon point-and-shoot. Let the high ISO speeds handle low light.
