New Canon SX30 IS Breaks Bridge Record with 35x Zoom!

And they're off: it seems that bridge cameras represent the latest segment to become locked in a race for ever more powerful zooms, like the super-zoom compacts before them.  Canon didn't want to be left behind, and after offering 14x on a point-and-shoot, the SX210 IS, it's now gone for a 35x on zoom on its new SX30 IS.

Wide-angle: 24 mm--telephoto: 840 mm.  That's pretty much all you need to know about the latest member of the PowerShot family.

Everything else is resolutely traditional, including a 14 Megapixel CCD sensor, a rotating screen with a resolution of just 230 000 pixels, an electronic viewfinder with 202 000 pixels, 720p HD video and no RAW mode. In short, it's a pretty boring bridge.

But it does have that record-breaking zoom, which allows Canon to get back into a race it looked like abandoning with the SX20 IS and its 'mere' 20x zoom.  The good news is that the aperture hasn't suffered too much despite the extra length, with f/2.8-5.8, while the wide-angle of 24 mm is not bad.  Canon also claims to have made big improvements to stability, promising reliably sharp photos in 1/30 s at maximum zoom, something that we're very much looking forward to checking out. 

The Canon SX30 IS is fortunately no more expensive than its predecessor, but the lens hood is an optional extra, a little piece of stinginess we could have done without ..

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