Whether you’ve just started dabbling in photography or need a simple point and shoot camera without the hassle and complexity of DSLR’s, this is where the Canon Powershot series come in and with each successive model, they prove time after time how powerful and easily operated their digital camera technology is.
The newest edition to the range was the Canon Powershot SX740 HS. The feature-rich camera is a relatively compact device and somehow feels sleeker compared to the SX730 while it is said to generate even higher quality pictures.
First impression
Admittedly, photography is not particularly my strongest forte, but definitely not something I am completely inept at. Due to the nature of my day job as a video journalist, I am practically married to cameras, but more than pictures I am more interested in the device’s ability to take good videos. This was the very reason why the one feature that really caught my eye was the UHD 4K video recording and stereo audio recording.
The camera has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and much like its predecessors, the SX740 also comes with a 40X optical zoom lens of 20.3 megapixels and a focal range of 24-960mm. The LCD screen can be swivelled all the way to 180 degrees, allowing you take some nice selfie shots and even record your Vlogs.
Looking at these various aspects of the camera, my first impression was that this was a great camera for travellers and Vloggers.
What I liked
The user interface is pretty straightforward and as I mentioned earlier, it’s a great point-and-shoot camera. For the absolute beginners, the camera also has a feature called assistant mode. This will help get you started and at often times, it made me feel the same wonder that I presume cavemen felt when they discovered fire.
Learning from its predecessors, the camera has some really cool new features. Given the ideal lighting set up, the camera can take some pretty amazing pictures and even I was impressed by the flexible depth-of-field. The strength of the zoom and the lens can be seen from this picture of a flower I took in a shop from a considerable distance, for which I had to zoom all the way in and after toggling a bit with the focus, I was able to capture a pretty decent picture, in my opinion.
What I didn’t like
When the lighting was in my favour, I was able to take some amazing shots, but my enthusiasm for the device quickly dampened when I tested it out at night. The camera has an ISO range of 100 to 3200, so it was no surprise that even thought I was able to take a sharp image, but the overall quality and noise just made it subpar.
One feature that I found was only there in name was the Wi-Fi connectivity, which was super dodgy and the camera would often go offline. Much like my love life, the camera just couldn’t establish a stable connection.
Even though, with the SX740 you can take really high quality videos – given you have the perfect lighting – the video options are quite limited. The camera does not have the slow-motion feature and I think the only solace you can find when doing videos on your camera is that the footage is in 4K.
Conclusion
Even though there were some things that I didn’t particularly liked, it shouldn’t take anything away from the fact that the Canon SX740 is in fact a brilliant photography camera and if you just want to do some simple, straight forward videos just to capture the moment, I can’t think of a better point-and-shoot camera. I would give this device a solid 7 out of 10 and strongly recommend it for beginner photographers. For the advanced and the intermediate, I am sure canon has a wealth of other options for you.
