Canon PowerShot ELPH 510 HS Pro Reviews

Smartphones with ever better on-board cameras are ruthlessly encroaching on the point and shoot camera's territory, which goes a long way toward explaining why lots of digital cameras now come equipped with touchscreen LCD's and other smartphone features. If you use your camera ONLY for snapshots, recording impromptu video clips of your children and pets, and producing "selfies" to upload to Facebook and YouTube, then you'll probably be fine with just your phone cam. However, if you use your camera to record memories from those once in a lifetime trips or special family events - then your phone cam is going to come up short when compared to even auto-exposure only compact P&S digital cameras. Phone cams lack the flexibility, ease of use, creative control, and better quality optics offered by even the simplest point and shoot camera. At just shy of an inch thick, the svelte Canon ELPH 510 HS is a truly pocketable camera, but the law of diminishing returns comes into play here. The Canon ELPH 510 HS was designed to appeal to casual photographers - it is not a camera that professionals or serious photographers would select for their own use. And while it will produce consistently better images than any currently available smartphone, those images won't be radically better. Whether you actually need a P&S camera in addition to your smartphone is an important question and consumers will have to answer that question based on their gadget budget and personal preferences.

The IXUS 510HS continues the IXUS range's tradition for well-designed compacts and is impressive to look at. However in use there are several issues, the biggest - and no doubt the most troubling - being the model's 3.2in touchscreen functionality. If you can handle these niggles, the IXUS produces some excellent results and offers more than enough to warrant a recommendation.

The Canon IXUS 510 HS is a belter in the image quality department, but it’s the camera’s design and price that holds it back from better things. The touchscreen technology just isn’t up to speed in today’s smartphone world, which will make the transition between one and the next tricky. The lack of many buttons to control the camera may sound like a grand idea, but in reality this merely slows down use and makes menu digging tiresome. Then of course there’s that price. It’s almost £300. That’s pricier than the Panasonic Lumix TZ30 which has a far more significant 20x optical zoom, includes the touchscreen but has a better and eminently more usable design. The IXUS 510 HS has some strong plus points on its side, including Wi-Fi, but its just too pricey for this market level.

The Canon PowerShot ELPH 510 HS has a lot to live up to, but it also has a lot going for it. For starters, there's its slim, stylish, and highly portable design, which makes the Canon 510 a great camera to stash in a bag or your pocket when you want to capture images that are better quality than what you can get from your smartphone. What the Canon 510 also has going for it over a smartphone is its extremely versatile 12x (28mm-336mm) zoom lens with optical image stabilization. I found this long zoom to be great for photographing everything from picturesque landscapes on the wide-angle to zoomed in close-ups of deer, Bond girls, and other beautiful creatures.

The slender, feature-packed ELPH 510 offers a versatile lens, nice feature set and effective image stabilization. Image quality is good for its class, and generally quite impressive considering the ambitious range of its 12X zoom. We only have two real issues with this camera, but depending on how you use it either or both could be very serious. Firstly, as regards image quality, chromatic aberrations can be problematic in some scenes (especially towards the edges in wideangle shots). Canon's newer compact cameras feature Digic V processors that correct CA in-camera, but the ELPH 510 HS misses out. Secondly, the 510's all-important touch-screen interface isn't perfect, and won't suit everyone. Screen responsiveness is not at the level we'd expect from a smartphone or from the touch-screens on some competitive models and this can be seriously detrimental to the user experience. It's not a deal-breaker, necessarily (the 510 HS is primarily a point and shoot camera, after all), but it can be very frustrating, especially since the touch-sensitive UI is so utterly central to the user experience. Utimately, the ELPH 510 HS is a good-value, versatile camera that is capable of producing nice images. For basic point-and-shoot operation it is a perfectly pleasant companion (and the zoom range is great), but the laggy, unprecise touchscreen makes getting to grips with its feature set much less enjoyable than it should be.

The Canon ELPH 510 HS / IXUS 1100 HS is the flagship model in the 2011 ELPH / IXUS range. Its headline features are a 12x zoom lens supported by Canon's new Intelligent IS image stabilisation and a 3.2 inch touch screen. Canon announced the ELPH 510 HS / IXUS 1100 HS as the world's slimmest 12x zoom camera and it's an extremely compelling option if you're looking for good telephoto reach in a smaller, simpler and more stylish format than is offered by compact superzooms like Sony's HX9V or the Panasonic Lumix ZS10 / TZ20. But in the final analysis, the ELPH 510 HS / IXUS 1100 HS is all about the size, the zoom and the touch screen. If those features are high on your must-have list, you won't find them combined in a more stylish way.

The Canon IXUS 1100 HS is heavily priced to reflect the amount of quality that's been poured into it. At around £350 it could be out of reach for most people, being around £100 more than an average camera of reasonable build and performance. £350 is actually skirting around entry-level DSLR territory. Of course this begs the question: is it worth the extra? It could very well be. Check out the noise results then go to a shop and try the touch-screen to see if you could manage with it. We think we could probably get used to it after a while which makes the Canon IXUS 1100 HS a cracking camera.

If you can live with the quirks of the Canon IXUS 1100 HS's interface, you will be rewarded with sharp, colourful images with good dynamic range. However, with a price of £350, you may not want to.

Canon still seems to be playing catch up with its point-and-shoots, but the Canon PowerShot 510 HS shows that they don't have far to go. If you're looking for a tiny, long zoom camera, the 510 HS is one of the best you're going to find.

The Canon PowerShot Elph 510 HS is a very good choice if you want a lot of zoom from a small camera body, and you prefer a touch screen to physical controls. But poor low-light performance and a slow start-up time hold this compact superzoom back.

The Canon PowerShot 510 HS is a solid 12MP camera with a very useful 12x zoom. Image quality is very good and the movies are more than satisfactory. Optical Image Stabilization is also a real plus. We had our issues with the touchscreen interface and would strongly recommend you try it out before purchasing—or just make sure the retailers doesn’t have a restocking fee in case it disappoints. We weren’t thrilled enough with the PowerShot 510 HS to bestow an Editor’s Choice award, but it remains a solid point-and-shoot worthy of our recommendation.

The IXUS 1100 HS has a wide-range of features, with full HD video recording and is really well built with a metal body and 3.2 inch LCD touch screen. The camera produces a decent image and you can get really close into the action with the 12x optical zoom lens which is packed into the small body. The camera is priced quite highly and the battery life is quite short at just 170 shots. Overall, if your budget can stretch to the price, the Canon IXUS 1100 HS comes recommended.

The Canon IXUS 1100 HS is a stylish and well-made touch-screen compact that offers good point-and-shoot usability, a generous zoom range and a decent, if not quite class-leading, range of shooting features. While touch-screen control remains a nice idea in principle, in practice it does slow overall operation of the camera down quite considerably. That’s a shame because, touch-screen control issues aside, the IXUS 1100 HS is a very competent and stylish camera. Given its fairly high launch price we wouldn’t expect it to hold much appeal beyond those particularly averse to normal physical controls. However, should the street price drop below £300 then it’s likely to find much more mass appeal.

Superb image quality but the touchscreen control is clumsy and the price is too high.