Introduction

Design & Appearance

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With the Canon PowerShot 500 HS there's a few key feature to talk about in terms of design and appearance. For starters, the camera comes in silver, pink or brown colors, but all three of these colors are fairly muted. This is not a camera that comes in bright colors like day-glo. These tones are definitely quieter and more sophisticated.

Turning the 500 HS around to its back side and you see the other notable feature of the camera—it has only one dedicated button (other than the shutter and power on the top). The rest of the camera's controls are part of the touchscreen interface on the LCD. This is a feature that will likely be divisive among users, as there are definitely some out there who still hate touchscreens (despite the fact that the systems are everywhere now). The screen is pretty large, so using the touch interface isn't bad most of the time, but we still had problems every now and then.

Tour

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Ease of Use

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The 500 HS can be a simple camera to use, there's no doubt about that, but the one thing you have to enjoy using is a touchscreen interface. Using the touchscreen is the only way you can access menus and set controls with the camera, so if that's not something you're prepared to work with then you should quit on the camera right now. Just look at the back of the 500 HS to see what we're talking about. The camera only has one real button—for playback—and the rest of the back is taken up by the 3.2-inch screen.

The touchscreen on the 500 HS is much like every other touchscreen in the consumer camera industry. By that, we mean it is simultaneously a pleasure to use and a frustrating tool. The touchscreen doesn't always respond with perfect accuracy, and it can get cluttered with tons of icons and information. But, it does allow the 500 HS to look more stylish and streamline, and you don't have to worry as much about physical buttons breaking or getting stuck.

Canon does do its main menu design very well, and it works in tune with the touchscreen interface, but the Function menu can be annoying to use. It requires you to slide your finger along the touchscreen to select and set controls, and that's not always the easiest thing to do. On a positive note, the icons in the Function menu are large and easy to read, although some of them are confusing if you haven't used the camera before.

Size & Handling

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The PowerShot ELPH 500 HS looks small, but you can easily find more compact models if you shop around. But do you really need a camera that's smaller than the dimensions of the 500 HS: 4 x 2.2 x 1 inches (100.6 x 55.4 x 25mm). The camera is actually slightly under one inch thick, and it weighs around 185g fully loaded. We don't mind this weight, even though it is a bit heavier than some of the ultracompact cameras on the market. The extra weight makes the 500 HS easier to keep balanced when you shoot with one hand.

The camera doesn't provide you with much ergonomic shape in which to wrap your hands around, but it is small enough that you can squeeze it tight without worry. Like we said, the 500 HS does feel durable, but its stylish design is very prone to scratches and scuffs. Keep it in a carrying case if you want it to remain unscathed.

Auto Mode

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The Canon 500 HS is the kind of camera that works best in auto mode. It has some manual controls, but it lacks a full manual mode and many of its controls are very limited (it has no manual focus, for example). Its auto modes are plentiful, however, as the camera features a bunch of scene modes, lots of picture effects, and good autofocus and auto exposure.

Movie Mode

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Movie recording on the Canon 500 HS isn't just a basic feature—the camera has a lot of different modes and options. There's a 1920 x 1080 record mode that uses a 24p frame rate, a 1280 x 720 mode that records with a 30p frame rate, and two standard definition record modes (640 x 480 and 320 x 240).

Is that enough for you? No? Well, there's actually even more. The Canon 500 HS also supports iFrame recording, which uses a special compression system that makes your videos easier to work with using Apple's iMovie software. Then there's a mode called "Super Slow Motion Movie" that records a 640 x 480 video image at 120 frames per second or a 320 x 240 video at 240 frames per second. Lastly, there's a Miniature effect movie mode that uses extremely slow frame rates of 6 fps, 3 fps, or 1.5 fps. On a tiny digital camera like the 500 HS, we can't really ask for much more in the way of movie recording than all this.

Playback Mode

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The playback mode button is one of the few dedicated buttons—and the only button on the back of the camera—that you'll find on the 500 HS. Pressing it brings you to playback mode, which is just like any other playback mode that you see on traditional digital cameras these days. Photos are arranged as thumbnails, or you can shuffle through them one-by-one in full-screen view.

Custom Image Presets

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Scene modes on the camera include: Kids & Pets, Portrait, Handheld Night Scene, Low Light, Beach, Foliage, Snow, and Fireworks. The camera also has a number of picture effects to make your image more colorful or to adjust skin tones, as well as digital effects like fish-eye and miniature.

Drive/Burst Mode

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Shooting regularly with the 500 HS (in P mode), you can take 3.4 shots per second with the camera. Switch over to the high-speed burst mode and the speed more than doubles to 8.2 shots/second. There is no auto exposure bracketing mode on the camera, but there is a self-timer that can be set to go off anywhere between 0-10 seconds, or at 20, 25, or 30 seconds. You can specify 1-10 shots in one-shot increments with the self-timer as well.

Manual Controls

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The PowerShot 500 HS has a few manual controls, but the Canon certainly does not accentuate these features. The Function menu on the camera is where you can switch to aperture-priority and shutter-priority modes, and all controls are set by using the touchscreen interface on the LCD. This system isn't bad if you adjust a control once in a while, but for repeated (or precise) adjustment, it really doesn't make the cut.

Our view is that the 500 HS works best in regular auto mode or when using a specific scene mode, but that doesn't mean we're not pleased that Canon made the decision to include some manual controls. We're happy the controls are there if you really need to use them, we just don't think they are all that convenient or easy to use with the touchscreen menu system. The lack of a dedicated, full manual mode may bother some, but most users of the 500 HS probably won't even notice its omission.

Focus

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The focus range on the 500 HS depends what focus mode you are using. With normal AF the range is 2 inches to infinity, while the macro AF setting brings the range down to 1.2 inches to infinity. The range also changes when you use optical zoom.

We found the autofocus system to work reasonably well in our time with the camera on the floor at the CP+ photo show in Japan, but if you're looking for a camera with a manual focus option you should keep searching. The 500 HS has autofocus only.

ISO

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If you don't want to use the auto ISO setting, you can set the ISO manually with options of 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, or 3200.

Aperture & Shutter Speed

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The shutter speed range on the Canon 500 HS, which can be set manually, is 15 seconds to 1/1600 seconds. In auto mode, the shutter speed won't drop below one second, although the shutter speeds used by the camera vary depending on what scene mode you are using.

The widest aperture setting for the camera is f/2, but if you zoom in this aperture closes to f/5.8. Aperture and shutter speed cannot be set independently of each other on the camera, as they can only be adjusted in their respected priority modes (Av and Tv).

White Balance

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There are a few white balance presets on the Canon 500 HS, but the list isn't extensive. The preset options include Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, and Fluorescent H. There's also a manual white balance option and an auto mode.

Exposure & Metering

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Direct manual exposure can be shifted from -2 to +2 in 1/3 EV increments on the 500 HS. There aren't really any other advanced exposure controls other than a basic auto exposure lock function. When using auto exposure, the camera does have three different metering modes: evaluative (uses face detection), center-weighted average, and spot (metering is fixed to the center of the frame).

Image Stabilization

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The camera has built-in optical image stabilization. The fact that the stabilization is optical means that it shouldn't degrade image quality when used... and that's always a good thing!

Picture Quality & Size Options

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Much like the Canon PowerShot SX230, which was also unveiled at CP+ this year, the 500 HS has a ton of photo size options. The largest option is the 12-megapixel 4000 x 3000 image size, while the smallest is a 480 x 480 setting. There are plenty of sizes in between, and you can take photos with aspect ratios of 16:9, 3:2, 4:3, or 1:1. Two quality options, normal and fine, are also available for each size option.

Picture Effects

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There are quite a few color controls and digital effects available on the 500 HS. The "My colors" feature allows you to make your images more vivid, or use presets like Neutral, Sepia, or Black & White. There's also individual color tone options that allow you to lighten skin colors (or darken them), or make specific colors deeper.

LCD

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The LCD on the 500 HS is large and may look enticing at first glance, but sometimes looks can be deceiving. The screen is a generous 3.2-inches in size, but its resolution is just 461,00 pixels. That's half the resolution that the screens on Nikon's high-end Coolix cameras have, and the same goes with Sony's high-end Cyber-shot models. Of course, Nikon's Coolpix cameras only have 3-inch screens, while many of the Sony's have 3.5-inch screens.

What we're really saying with all this is that the Canon 500 HS has a middle-of-the-road LCD. It is big, and we like its size over the 3-inch screen on the PowerShot SX230, but we'd like it to have a higher resolution so that your images look crisper during playback and while shooting.

Flash

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The built-in flash on the 500 HS is not the variety that pops-up from inside the camera. It is always present on the front of the camera, so you must be careful not to cover it with your fingers when you take a photo using the flash. Canon lists the flash range as 1.6 - 16 feet (50cm to 5m) and the recycling time as 10 seconds or less. The camera also has options for red-eye reduction using the flash.

Lens & Sensor

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The lens on the PowerShot 500 HS has a 4.4x optical zoom, which isn't all that much. If you want more zoom, you'll probably have to get a bigger camera, and that means sacrificing portability (one of the great benefits of the 500 HS). The sensor on the camera is a 12.1-megapixel 1/2.3-inch CMOS—the same sensor featured on the new PowerShot SX230 also from Canon.

Jacks, Ports & Plugs

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There are not many ports on the 500 HS, and both of them are on the right side of the camera (behind a port cover). Moving the cover, you'll find access to an HDMI port and a USB jack. The bottom of the camera houses the battery and memory card compartments, but that is all the 500 HS has in the way of connectivity features.

Battery

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The camera uses the NB-6L rechargeable battery pack and it comes with a charger. The approximate battery life for the camera is 180 shots or four hours of use according to Canon.

Memory

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All of the standard SD memory card formats, which include SDHC and SDXC memory cards, will work with the Canon 500 HS. The card slot, like the battery compartment, is located on the bottom of the camera.

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Conclusion

Even after spending a considerable amount of time with the Canon PowerShot 500 HS at the CP+ show in Yokohama, Japan, we're still not sure what to make of the camera. It's got a decent design that looks nifty, but it doesn't have anything that leaps out and grabs your attention. Maybe that's what Canon was going for, though. The 500 HS is certainly less flashy than a lot of the compact cameras we've seen at this show, but this muted design gives it an aura of sophistication that many cameras lack.

The 500 HS doesn't have a full set of manual controls, so if you're a control-hound this isn't the model for you. It definitely works best in auto mode or when using one of its many dedicated scene modes. The LCD on the back is large and glossy, but it doesn't have the same crisp resolution that we've seen from the competition (particularly on the high-end Nikon and Sony cameras). The touchscreen interface has its faults, but it is no worse (or better) than touchscreen systems we usually see on consumer cameras. In all, the setup and interface should be fine for most users once they get the hang of it.

The PowerShot 500 HS is set to retail for just under $300 and it comes in silver, pink, or brown.

Sample Photos

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Specs

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