Canon PowerShot SX230 HS - Great for Low-light Photography?

Low-light shot taken without flash to demo the Canon HS system

The question I set out to answer here is 'Does the Canon HS System really take good (usable) low-light photographs with minimum noise?'

Over the past almost 10 months that I have used the Canon PowerShot SX 230HS I have been very happy with it's overall performance, from it's amazing X14 zoom (and relatively wide starting point of 28mm), it's miniature toy mode, Also it's stitch assistant has helped my panoramic cravings and of course let's not forget the many manual control options not just of ISO and WB but Aperture and Shutter priority modes in particular which I have found invaluable when taking macro shots where control of depth of field is essential, others who take portraitures will no doubt find these useful too.

However the stand out feature most trumpeted by Canon of this camera is it's High Sensitivity (HS) after all it is included in the name of the camera itself. From what I have read Canon takes a twofold approach to low light photography in their HS enabled cams, the first is increasing the sensitivity of the camera's, ermmm, sensor allowing for an improved ISO range and the second is the newer Digic processor of course (version 4 in the SX 230 HS) which has a greater capacity for reducing noise and processing the images taken by the sensor.

So how does this compare to using the flash vs not using the flash in low light situations I hear you ask? Well I took an evening stroll through a local cemetery to find out (not recommended if you're afraid of ghosts or zombies, neither of which I saw in Arlington MA yesterday).

The shot at the top of this article was taken without any flash and the camera has done an amazing job of making the twilight conditions almost appear like 2pm on a cloudy day which in reality the sun had all but set.

Low light shot taken with on-camera flash

The second shot taken here was with the camera's built flash. There's no hot shoe on the SX230 and you can see here at a aperture of f/3.08 that the flashed light falls off rather quickly, nothing passed ~18 ft receives any light here. In this shot the flash has lit the front grave stones and they have more detail and clarity than the low light none flashed shot, however for objects beyond those details are lost and have turned to black, note the trees and branches are now in silhouette compared to the first shot where we have exposed bark level detail albeit rather noisily.

So which shot is better? I think the answer is subjective and it really depends on the effect you were going for, if your intention is to take a night portrait you would opt for the flash to highlight your subject, or if you wish to read the names of the gravestones here. If however you wish to capture more of the surrounding landscape and objects out of the range of your camera's flash then leaving the flash off and leaving the exposure to the Canon HS system seems to be the way to go.

What's your take on the Canon HS cameras versus their traditional IS counterparts which use simple camera shake technology and/or upping the ISO settings?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Photography Project - Handlebars 2022

Image
Here's hoping for a healthy and prosperous 2022, it can't be any worse than the last 2 years, right? 01/08/2022 - Mystic River Parkway, Medford MA 01/09/2022 - Fells Reservation, Winchester MA   01/23/2022 - Fells Reservation, Winchester MA 02/11/2022 - Rail Tracks, Medford MA 02/13/2022 - Mystic Lakes, Medford MA 02/18/2022 - Mystic River, Medford MA 03/06/2022 - Emery Park, Lexington MA 03/08/2022 - Mystic Lakes, Medford MA 03/13/2022 - Charles River, Cambridge MA 03/15/2022 - Mystic River, Medford MA 03/20/2022 - Faneuil Hall, Boston MA 03/22/2022 - Mystic Lakes, Medford MA 03/25/2022 - Alewife Brook Parkway, Arlington MA 03/26/2022 - Massasoit State Park, Taunton MA 03/27/2022 - Porter Sq, Somerville MA 03/29/2022 - St Pauls Cemetery, Arlington MA 04/02/2022 - Fresh Pond, Cambridge MA
Read more

Fishermen Returning Home - Second Watercolor Painting

Image
With the rain coming down outside and lack of any natural light I felt inspired to make a colorful landscape scene with green hills and blue slightly overcast skies with a zero percent change of rain. So of course using a photo I took in Iceland a years back wasn't going to fully fit the bill but I thought if I took a little be a artistic license with the original photo I could build upon it. Fishermen Returning Home I really feel happy with the outcome of this one having made an attempt at following 'wet on wet' technique with the sky. Also made an attempt at pulling down the colors to blend them from the darker purples to the lighter sky blues. I returned to the sky later once it had dried to add the fluffy little clouds layering in 3 shades of grey and white to give a feeling of depth that I really like. The Original Photo I feel like I need help on foregrounds for landscapes. Looking at the original photo and I felt like it was lacking a little something for perspective
Read more

Earth and Crab Nebula, Acrylic 5x5

Image
Crab Nebular  A weekend trip to the local art store lead me to find some '2 for 1' deals on some small black canvases that as soon as I saw them I thought 'outer space'.  And finding something like this on sale gave me the confidence to experiment and try my first every Acrylic painting on canvas (outside of a Paint night event last year).   3rd Rock From The Sun Having only painted a couple of times previously, I was excited to see that these turned out so well that I wish I bought more of these little canvases while they were on sale. I did watch many many tutorials on how to paint a space scene before attempting these, and definitely feel like there's plenty of room for improvement but I had so much fun on such a small canvas and using a toothbrush dipped in white paint to flick on the stars was a great messy stress reliever. I would definitely recommend doing this to anyone feeling intimidated with larger canvas sizes.
Read more