Stefano Arcidiacono, personal website.
After you have had in his hands the impressive full-frame EOS 6D and the small but surprising EOS 100D I open the package just arrived and I find myself a little surprised SX510 HS, a bridge camera from 200 €, to What will come?
Well you say, for those who can not afford to spend higher figures may be a good compromise, a camera characteristics “abundant” in a small average body, not to put in your pocket, but still transportable in a small bag. In the end I, like (almost) everyone I guess, I started to enjoy the right with a digital compact camera, a 2 megapixel Powershot A40
SX510 HS is definitely a bit ‘ahead of his old great-grandmother, in 350 grams provides a stabilized zoom equivalent to 24-720mm with opening f/3.4-.5.8 followed by a CMOS sensor 1/2.3 inch backlit with 12.1 megapixels available, it lacks Wi-Fi and an avalanche of various modes and settings.
What ever will (a machine with a 720mm)?
Accomplice Etna, which in December 2013 gave the show for several nights, the small SX510 HS has turned into my “Etna-cam” staff. Mounted on a tripod on a permanent basis, for several nights rose up with me on the terrace to take pictures (even alone), while I watched the show with a 10-30X60 binoculars.
Even alone you …
The plan of night work was more or less the following:
- Climb beautiful terrace filled with all the accessories.
- Extend the tripod and point the camera to frame the craters and lava river, the 720mm is more than enough, and sometimes coming down with the casting down too many.
- some test shots with the timer to 2 seconds to eliminate vibration.
- Set the parameters that give the best results (manual of course) and start the timer with a sequence of 10 or more shots.
- Enjoying the lava fountain with binoculars, checking from time to time on the display what happens.
- Check that the nose is froze not possibly turn the cigar to keep it warm!
With this system for several nights I came back inside with dozens and dozens of shots to control and adjust, and most are fairly monotonous and son ended up in the trash, but on those occasions where the machine has grasped the moment of the explosion with its throwing incandescent rocks, I got hold of the photos and definitely to be printed.
Design and Controls
SX510 HS has the appearance of a small SLR, the body itself is not very large, but plenty of grip and the barrel make it a solid machine that hardly goes in your pocket, it definitely needs his custody, maybe large enough to put a small tripod, with a maximum focal length so that long becomes essential
On the left side, right on the barrel, there is a button with a rectangle and arrows that I had never met before, pressing the display asks you to “select the face to detect,” holding it down instead of the optical switches to the minimum focal length and using the zoom rocker allows you to set the area you want to “zoom in” extravagant perhaps, but somehow useful for composing.
rocker that controls focus, however, placed right on the grip with the shutter release button in the middle, allowing two different speed “shift focus”, a normal-halfway and pushing full throttle all the way from one side or on the other hand, given the wide range of focal lengths is definitely welcome a trick like that.
Behind rocker and button click wheel are preset, auto mode, various creative and classic 4 PASM. Beside the button to turn on and drowned off the machine. Staying at the top, in the middle there is a pop-up flash that gets up manually, just behind the holes of the microphones, there is a slide for mounting external accessories.
On the left side the holes of the speaker, on the opposite side a door rubber covers the two available connection, a USB and the HDMI.
Below are the compartment that houses the proprietary batteries and the memory card, the thread for tripod, centered in the camera body, but off-axis lens.
Behind Finally, all controls are placed on the right side, the left side is covered by the 3-inch screen. The controls include a button reserved for video recording, drowned in the upper right, and a ring / pad with center button surrounded by 4 buttons for quick access to photo display, menu, change the amount of information displayed and finally modify the compensation.
sensor and quality
SX510 HS is equipped with a backlit sensor 1/2.3 type CMOS, assisted by a DIGIC 4 processor, the sensor to the canons of today is quite small, virtually the same size mounted on some next-generation smartphone, but it is also the only way to have a 24-720mm so small!
ISO 100 (click on) the image is clean and well detailed.
ISO 400 (above) and you begin to glimpse the 800 (below) shows the good that is in the green band in the barrel roll, however, also saw the resolution is available at acceptable levels.
ISO 1600 (above) I was expecting to see some kind of deterioration, however the sensor is doing very well, the deterioration is more noticeable in dark areas, even if the lint are not as sharp, the writing is read well and the colors are consistent.
ISO 3200 performance obviously fall further, but the colors remain faithful to the end, not bad, it is seen that the small sensor and the electronics that run it was refined and pushed to the maximum.
Conclusion
When you have machines made in his hands to give the photographer the best possible quality becomes difficult to judge low-end machines, the comparison with the models tested earlier is obviously impossible, qualitatively the 100D with its APS-C sensor is another planet, let alone the full-frame 6D.
Yet the SX510 HS, the merits of the maximum focal length of the telescope, I came in handy during the trial period, and it was found, however, a fairly fast and easy to use.
Recommended for those who are beginners and want a machine that allows to try a bit ‘of everything, with a quality honest, definitely enough to pull off some nice press.
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