Canon PowerShot ELPH 500 HS 12.1 MP CMOS Digital Camera with Full HD Video and Ultra Wide Angle Lens (Silver)

I want to start my review by saying that I am not a professional, nor an amateur photographer. I am just a Father who wanted to buy a decent camera for taking family photos of my boys and wife. I spent the last two months looking for a camera to buy that would produce "high quality" pictures of my family. I first wanted a dslr and I was ready to pay the premium price for it. Since I mostly use my camera on auto settings and have read you will not get a much better shot with a dslr on auto than a p&s, I decided to save some money and go with something cheaper. I have looked at every bridge camera and high end p&s that you can imagine. The next thing I considered was the functions on the camera. I was going to buy the Canon s100, but decided to save some money since I was not going to be using the RAW function for pictures. I don't do post processing, so I wanted the best picture possible out of my camera. Now keep in mind, I am coming from a fujifilm camera that is just over a year old, a basic p&s. The old camera produced okay results, but they were not what I wanted. So after spending hours upon hours on photography message boards, I came across a post that recommended this camera as it has a fast f 2.0 lens. After doing some searching, it appeared to be the only one in this price range with this fast of a lens. The f2.0 let's a lot more light in, so when I used to have to use the flash with my old camera, I don't have to now with my elph 500. Now onto the actual review of the camera, to sum it up, IT IS AWESOME! The high sensitivity sensor with this lens takes pictures that are so crisp. It's really a step up in terms of picture quality from my old point and shoot. It feels solid and well made. The touchscreen function will take some getting used to, but overall it's easy to use. There is a little switch on top of the camera that you lets you choose between auto and program. There are so many features under program that can still let you be in control. The flash is powerful and really brightens up pictures if needed. One word of advice if you are taking pictures of babies. This camera has a little red autofocus light that comes on when the flash is needed. For my baby, he doesn't like it and will look away. You can turn off that feature in the settings if you find your child does not like the light either. The 1080p video on this is also awesome and is much better in low light that my dedicated 1080p video camera. The footage is less grainy on the Canon which really surprised me. In conclusion, I would highly recommend this camera to anyone that wants very high image quality with ease of use(auto mode) without spending a lot of money. It's definitely worth the price!

This is the second Canon Elph 500HS that I bought. I bought the first one about a year ago and it takes such excellent indoor pictures that I bought a second one as a backup in case they become unavailable. After a through evaluation of the first 500HS, I discovered that it could take less sharp pictures when shooting in Auto mode. But by just flipping the switch from Auto mode to the camera icon (P-Mode), this camera always takes sharp pictures. Don't worry, shooting in P-Mode is exactly like shooting in Auto mode where you can just point & shoot with full auto everything. I did find that the default setting for the 500HS tends to overexpose slightly so I set it's exposure compensation to -1/3 for both outdoor and indoor pictures and the exposures are perfect. You only have to do this once and the camera remembers it even when you power it off or remove the battery for charging. Exposure compensation cannot be set in Auto mode so that's another good reason to set the camera to P-Mode. The lens on this camera is exceptional with a F2.0 aperature when not zoomed, which lets in a LOT of light for exceptionally good low light indoor images. Compare to the usual F3.3 aperature on most other compact point & shoot cameras which does not let in as much light. Plus this camera uses a BSI (Back Side Illuminated) CMOS sensor to capture the image which is a later technology to capture more light and therefore have less noise in low light images. The combination of the F2.0 aperature and the BSI CMOS sensor results in exceptional low light indoor image quality. I bought 3 other compact P&S cameras prior to buying the Elph 500HS, and returned all 3 because they took such poor low light indoor images. They all had enough noise in low light images that the cameras did excessive noise reduction which made their low light images have a smeary water color look. The low light images from this Elph 500HS has substantially less noise so Canon did not have to do excessive noise reduction on the images. This results in natural looking and SHARP indoor images. --- Any camera can take good outdoor images but the true test is noise free, sharp indoor images. Folks who buy a compact point & shoot camera like this Elph 500HS don't normally want to fool with manual controls. But the 500HS does have Aperature and Shutter priority modes for folks who do like to control those parameters. This camera uses a touch screen which reviewers find not as good as an iPhone, but shooters who buy this camera don't want to fool with controls anyway. Actually, the touch screen is better when selecting images to playback. Just flick the zoom ring to the left to display small thumbnails (more presses = smaller thumbnails) and then touch the image you want to display on the screen. This is much easier than using navigation buttons to select an image for playback. To record video, when you're taking pictures, there's a small red icon on the screen. Just touch that red record icon and the camera starts recording video. Then touch the red stop icon and the video recording stops. Couldn't be simpler. Finally, this camera has a forward facing flash that doesn't pop up out of the camera. My wife would hate having a flash pop up under her finger when shooting indoors. Plus that would force her to hold the camera a little differently which she wouldn't want to do. My wife and I both love this camera.

I had very high expectations for this camera, and while it has performed beautifully in the video realm (better than expected), the still photo capabilities are not as good as I had hoped. I'm still fiddling with settings, hoping there is something I can do there to improve the quality. I had expected the still photos to approach or equal (possibly even surpass) those taken on my brother's Canon S95, but so far the S95 unquestionably outperforms the 500HS. I normally use an SLR (Canon 7D). I purchased this one as a small camera to take on outings. I end up taking a lot of video and very few still shots because the still photos just are not coming out. If I were to make the choice all over again, I would pay the extra money for the Canon S95. Edited to add: I played with this camera a little more over the weekend to see if I could improve its performance. I got some nice, clear portraits up close in natural light, and some decent ones up close in artificial light. As soon as I use the zoom, however, the pictures get very noisy.

Purchased this camera before going on vacation. I was really satisfied with the shipping, I received it quickly. As well, I was really satisfied with the camera itself. I was able to take good pictures and shoot videos while on vacation.

Just what I wanted & it came rally quickly.

This camera takes great low light and wide angle pictures. We found it very easy to use with a very responsive touch screen and sensble user interface.