Help in buying new camera

[alonstr6]

Hi,
i am looking for a camera mainly for landscape photos and closeups, with a superzoom and ability for night shoots.

I thought about the canon SX40 but i saw some bad reviews about it.
my price range is about the same as the above camera.

any offers?

[shoturtle]

night shooting and super zoom does not exist in reality. None of the super zoom has the ability to shoot pass 800iso well, or have a larger enough aperture to let in light, especially when you zoom out.

The sx40 does well as a daytime super zoom, but all the other super zoom will have similar results when shooting at night.

If you want a super zoom, and shoot at night. You will need to get and external flash to provide more light. And it will not work great if you are zoom all the way out.

[SIMON40]

alonstr6- taken with my SX40 indoors,with NO flash,using iso 1600 at varying zoom ranges.
Not too shabby,I think...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/4197640...7628112681238/

The low light capabilities of super zooms is improving all the time- and in my opinion- the SX40 is tops in this department. No match for an SLR with a fast aperture lens,but hey- what will that cost you..??!!

[shoturtle]

stage lighting, makes it easier for all camera to take indoor. not a good test as the subject has more light then an indoor dinner party where the subject does not have any spot lights on them.

[alonstr6]

In one of the topics here i saw the Fujifilm HS-20 pictures and it looks pretty good, maybe even better then the SX40, whats your opinion about that one?

[SIMON40]

alonstr6- what type of "night shoots" are you looking to take...?

[alonstr6]

I think when i said "night shoots" it ment too much, i am not planning on taking shoots of the stars or something like that, but i dont want that when i will take pictures at night it will be just noise all over.

[SIMON40]

Here's some more pics in low natural light,using the hand-held night scene mode.
Varying focal lengths,no flash. one at iso 1250 and the rest between iso 1600 and iso 3200.
Shutter speeds between 1/10 sec and 1/60th sec.
http://forums.steves-digicams.com/ar...ml#post1271064

With regards other "bridge" models- the current crop consist of-
Canon SX40HS,Panasonic FZ-150,Fujifilm HS-20,Sony HX-100V and the Nikon P500.

In my humble opinion the Canon leads in IQ(just) over the feature laden FZ-150(maybe the best there is if you don't need more than 600mm zoom). Fuji's manual type zoom will be a big boon for some,though I owned(briefly) the HS10,and found the image stabiliser was not as good as others(maybe the HS20's improved here?). The HX-100V IQ is compromised(in my opinion) by the 16mp sensor- especially in lower light. The P500 is also feature laden- though the lens is not quite as sharp as the Canon.

[alonstr6]

what is the camera you used for those pics? is it the canon SX40?
sorry for my ignorance but what is it IQ?

[pcake]

i checked the exif info on one of the pics, and yes, it is the sx40.

SIMON40, did you denoise those pics at all? if not, is there any chance you have the original full sized versions up somewhere?