The week of this review was an absolute nightmare in my personal life, and thus I got a little behind in updating my Blog. Basement flooding is NOT fun. Luckily I do not store any photography equipment in my basement, so my camera collection was undamaged. On that note I highly advise against ever storing anything camera related in a basement; Fungus likes to grow inside camera lenses afterall.
I still managed to take something out during this week of hell during short breaks to destress. I went for something simple and easy to shoot, a Canon Powershot SX130.
The SX series of Powershots are mid range Canon Point and Shoot cameras which add Manual controls (but no native RAW shooting) and a better optical zoom for the sacrifice of being physically larger then an ELPH or even S series Powershot.
Previously I reviewed the Powershot SX280 and Powershot SX720 which were later generations of the same basic design. The SX1XX series were where it all started, and originally they were powered by AA batteries instead of a rechargeable LI ION battery pack that are found in most point and shoot cameras past the mid 2000s.
The SX130 came out in 2010 and sported a fairly standard 1/2.3" 12mp sensor and a fairly good and solid 12x optical zoom.
The important thing to note about this camera is it had a CCD sensor, where most other SX Powershots (Including the SX280 and SX720) had a CMOS sensor. This made it have higher contrast and a slightly sharper image for a small sensor with the downside of being worse in Low Light conditions.
Being that I only really shot this camera outdoors (minus a few test shots inside a grocery store) high ISO really didn't come into play that much. That said, I was really impressed at how well the camera handled up to ISO 800 which is a feat where many other small sensor compacts (especially CCDs) really struggle with.
The camera is very chonky and has a good amount of heft to it. It's thicker then the newer Powershot SX series cameras too, in large part because of running off AA batteries.
So far I've reviewed a number of AA battery powered cameras and I've really dreaded shooting each and every one. They're either slow to respond and laggy, feel really cheaply made, have extremely poor image quality (even for what would classify as a Digicam) are slow to extend the lens and focus or chew through batteries like a tiger in a meat locker or any combination of these traits (or all of the above). But this camera was surprisingly none of these.
The the bar very isn't set very high for AA powered digicams but this camera not only clears it but exceeds it when compared to every other AA powered pocket cam in my collection I've reviewed so far. Even the Nikon L105 which was about the same era I did not enjoy the shooting experience with and that ran a sensor and Zoom range very similar to what is in this camera.
The difference is the SX130 is a lot better built, has much better optics, and offers full manual and priority modes with a control wheel on the back (Yes!). I took a set of partially drained rechargeable AAs and on one set of 70% charged NiMH AA batteries it lasted me the entire week showing no noticeable degradation of charge by the last shot.
By contrast the Nikon L105 drained one set of 4 AA batteries (Alkaline even!) in one day of shooting; whereas this camera shot an entire week on 2 AA batteries that weren't even fully charged, and I likely could have kept going another seven days of casual shooting easily without changing the batteries.
Needless to say, the Canon Powershot SX130 is by far the best AA powered pocket digicam in my collection. Is it the best Digicam in my collection? Of course not. But it is a reasonable middle ground camera on a field that is otherwise only occupied with cameras that have a proprietary battery pack (With the exception of the Fuji S2 Pro, but that is a special case and hardly pocketable and still requires a different proprietary battery to run alongside the AA). It could easily be a daily carry camera for me and I'd be happy with it.
The SX130 is fast and responsive with no noticeable shut down or start up lag. The shutter lag is minimal as well; and while its not as responsive as say a DSLR or Mirrorless ICL camera I could easily shoot street photography all day with this camera and be happy with it.
A lot of my photos were taken in dreary overcast days with this camera and it performed surprisingly well with the image quality (as you will see below). It is by far not the most vibrant of Canon CCDs (The S90 and ELPH 190 both having far more vibrant sensors) but it still has a slight punch that the SX280 with its CMOS sensor lacks.
I bought this camera originally as the "emergency backup" camera in case I forgot to charge batteries at home. This was prior to owning cameras with USB charging (Such as the Nikon Z50, Panasonic ZS50 and Panasonic ZS100). But given the situation I was out in the field, and could not charge my batteries at all but had access to a supplier of AA batteries the SX130 would be a solid digicam to have with.
This camera will likely go on my list of cameras to take a second look at next year as I enjoyed shooting it and it deserves to be used more thoroughly on a week where my stress levels aren't through the roof.
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