Canon PowerShot ELPH 500 HS 12.1 MP CMOS Digital Camera with Full HD Video and Ultra Wide Angle Lens (Silver)

I want to start my review by saying that I am not a professional, nor an amateur photographer. I am just a Father who wanted to buy a decent camera for taking family photos of my boys and wife. I spent the last two months looking for a camera to buy that would produce "high quality" pictures of my family. I first wanted a dslr and I was ready to pay the premium price for it. Since I mostly use my camera on auto settings and have read you will not get a much better shot with a dslr on auto than a p&s, I decided to save some money and go with something cheaper. I have looked at every bridge camera and high end p&s that you can imagine. The next thing I considered was the functions on the camera. I was going to buy the Canon s100, but decided to save some money since I was not going to be using the RAW function for pictures. I don't do post processing, so I wanted the best picture possible out of my camera. Now keep in mind, I am coming from a fujifilm camera that is just over a year old, a basic p&s. The old camera produced okay results, but they were not what I wanted. So after spending hours upon hours on photography message boards, I came across a post that recommended this camera as it has a fast f 2.0 lens. After doing some searching, it appeared to be the only one in this price range with this fast of a lens. The f2.0 let's a lot more light in, so when I used to have to use the flash with my old camera, I don't have to now with my elph 500. Now onto the actual review of the camera, to sum it up, IT IS AWESOME! The high sensitivity sensor with this lens takes pictures that are so crisp. It's really a step up in terms of picture quality from my old point and shoot. It feels solid and well made. The touchscreen function will take some getting used to, but overall it's easy to use. There is a little switch on top of the camera that you lets you choose between auto and program. There are so many features under program that can still let you be in control. The flash is powerful and really brightens up pictures if needed. One word of advice if you are taking pictures of babies. This camera has a little red autofocus light that comes on when the flash is needed. For my baby, he doesn't like it and will look away. You can turn off that feature in the settings if you find your child does not like the light either. The 1080p video on this is also awesome and is much better in low light that my dedicated 1080p video camera. The footage is less grainy on the Canon which really surprised me. In conclusion, I would highly recommend this camera to anyone that wants very high image quality with ease of use(auto mode) without spending a lot of money. It's definitely worth the price!

This is the second Canon Elph 500HS that I bought. I bought the first one about a year ago and it takes such excellent indoor pictures that I bought a second one as a backup in case they become unavailable. After a through evaluation of the first 500HS, I discovered that it could take less sharp pictures when shooting in Auto mode. But by just flipping the switch from Auto mode to the camera icon (P-Mode), this camera always takes sharp pictures. Don't worry, shooting in P-Mode is exactly like shooting in Auto mode where you can just point & shoot with full auto everything. I did find that the default setting for the 500HS tends to overexpose slightly so I set it's exposure compensation to -1/3 for both outdoor and indoor pictures and the exposures are perfect. You only have to do this once and the camera remembers it even when you power it off or remove the battery for charging. Exposure compensation cannot be set in Auto mode so that's another good reason to set the camera to P-Mode. The lens on this camera is exceptional with a F2.0 aperature when not zoomed, which lets in a LOT of light for exceptionally good low light indoor images. Compare to the usual F3.3 aperature on most other compact point & shoot cameras which does not let in as much light. Plus this camera uses a BSI (Back Side Illuminated) CMOS sensor to capture the image which is a later technology to capture more light and therefore have less noise in low light images. The combination of the F2.0 aperature and the BSI CMOS sensor results in exceptional low light indoor image quality. I bought 3 other compact P&S cameras prior to buying the Elph 500HS, and returned all 3 because they took such poor low light indoor images. They all had enough noise in low light images that the cameras did excessive noise reduction which made their low light images have a smeary water color look. The low light images from this Elph 500HS has substantially less noise so Canon did not have to do excessive noise reduction on the images. This results in natural looking and SHARP indoor images. --- Any camera can take good outdoor images but the true test is noise free, sharp indoor images. Folks who buy a compact point & shoot camera like this Elph 500HS don't normally want to fool with manual controls. But the 500HS does have Aperature and Shutter priority modes for folks who do like to control those parameters. This camera uses a touch screen which reviewers find not as good as an iPhone, but shooters who buy this camera don't want to fool with controls anyway. Actually, the touch screen is better when selecting images to playback. Just flick the zoom ring to the left to display small thumbnails (more presses = smaller thumbnails) and then touch the image you want to display on the screen. This is much easier than using navigation buttons to select an image for playback. To record video, when you're taking pictures, there's a small red icon on the screen. Just touch that red record icon and the camera starts recording video. Then touch the red stop icon and the video recording stops. Couldn't be simpler. Finally, this camera has a forward facing flash that doesn't pop up out of the camera. My wife would hate having a flash pop up under her finger when shooting indoors. Plus that would force her to hold the camera a little differently which she wouldn't want to do. My wife and I both love this camera.

I had very high expectations for this camera, and while it has performed beautifully in the video realm (better than expected), the still photo capabilities are not as good as I had hoped. I'm still fiddling with settings, hoping there is something I can do there to improve the quality. I had expected the still photos to approach or equal (possibly even surpass) those taken on my brother's Canon S95, but so far the S95 unquestionably outperforms the 500HS. I normally use an SLR (Canon 7D). I purchased this one as a small camera to take on outings. I end up taking a lot of video and very few still shots because the still photos just are not coming out. If I were to make the choice all over again, I would pay the extra money for the Canon S95. Edited to add: I played with this camera a little more over the weekend to see if I could improve its performance. I got some nice, clear portraits up close in natural light, and some decent ones up close in artificial light. As soon as I use the zoom, however, the pictures get very noisy.

Pro: 1) Great outdoor image quality. 2) Indoor image quality is good 70% of the time. 3) HD video is decent. Pick up some background noise but not too bad. 4) Focus is fast. 5) Have 3:2 aspect ratios I actually like the canon 500 HS a lot too bad it has several flaws to me. 1) 500 HS has a crazily loud motor noise when you zoom in/out during the video shoot. 2) Touch screen is not good. Selection is ok. But scrolling is hopeless. Also, very easy to select something randomly. 3) 720p video size is bigger than P300 (almost double). May be file format related. 4) Inconsistent indoor photo quality. 5) Need to remove the battery for charging. I tested Sony HX7V and Nikon P300 too. I am keeping the Nikon P300 instead. You can read that review of mine to explain why I like Nikon P300 more. But the Canon 500 HS is still very good.

I love this camera! I wanted a higher end point and shoot camera that could keep up with my kids and do well in low light. I read a lot of reviews and settled on this one. I thought about the ELPH 300hs but decided I was too used to using the touch screen on my Sony Cybershot to go back to buttons. I love the touch screen! The menus are well laid out and it is easy to find things. I was a little worried it would take me awhile to figure out the Canon menus since I have been a Sony user for so long, but I am not having any trouble at all! I am having fun trying out all of the programs/effects on the camera. The Kids and Pets setting is just what I was looking for. My kids don't sit still for me to take pictures and now I can just snap pictures of them on the go without the picture being too blurry. After reading reviews I was worried about battery life. I decided to buy and extra battery since we had a big wedding we were going to and I didn't want my camera to die before the day was done. Turns out I wouldn't have needed the extra battery. I still have the first battery in after taking 150 pictures and a few short videos. Another thing I love is that there isn't much delay between pressing the button and the actual capturing of the picture (this was a big frustration with my previous camera). The only thing I noticed is that with moving subjects and in low light you really have to make sure to give the camera time to focus by holding the button halfway down for a second or two before snapping the picture. I had great luck with this camera in low light. I snapped some really awesome pictures on the dance floor at the wedding. I was even able to shoot a little video on the dance floor. When I tried that with my old camera it turned out almost black, but with this camera I got a great video of my 3 year old dancing. I have only had this camera for a week, but I haven't found any area where this camera has let me down yet. I am excited to keep experimenting with some of the programs and effects I haven't gotten to use yet. Bottom line....Great camera! UPDATE: I lost my ELPH 500 HS while we were on vacation (a long sad story). I needed a new camera fast so I went to Best Buy and they only had the ELPH 300 HS and nothing else was really close to the quality I wanted at the price I wanted so I bought it. The 300 has pretty much the same functions as the 500 and still takes great pictures. But I would take my 500 back any day! The touch screen makes it so much simpler to navigate through the menus and change settings quickly. I don't think the microphone is as good on the 300 because a couple of my videos are hard to hear. It seems a little slower to focus and snap a picture, but maybe it is all in my head. One problem I noticed is that my photo editing software (I use Picasa) would automatically pick up the red eye on photos with my 500 but on the 300 I have to manually select the area to change it. The 300 looks cooler than the 500 and is a little smaller, but I loved the large screen on the 500 and you don't get that with the 300 since they had to make room for all the buttons. Bottom line in my opinion: Spend the extra $70 and go for the 500 - it is worth it.

Based on the good reviews on Amazon I bought this camera as a present for my wife. We went on a vacation and it seemed a good idea to have a better-quality alternative to smartphones cameras with their tiny optics. We shot 900+ pictures under various condition using the new camera. We also made a few hundred pictures with the iPhone 4 and 4s, so we could make a fairly objective comparison under various lighting circumstances. The camera looks good and feels well-built. It seemed a worthy successor to our excellent 4MP PowerShot ELPH S400 from 10 years ago. Based on the first impression, we had high expectations of our new top-of-the-line compact camera. Unfortunately the ELPH 500 camera disappointed badly. The picture quality is really poor, essentially ruining our vacation pictures. For most picture types, the ELPH 500 was significantly worse than the iPhone 4s (which has a much smaller lens and 25% fewer pixels). In none of the shots was this camera any better than the iPhone. The main problem is the image quality. Many pictures that our ELPH 500 produced were simply unsharp. The autofocus seemed to misjudge the situation often. Also, the poor focus seemed to be worse on the right half of the picture which might indicate a manufacturing problem unique to our camera. In any case, Canon's quality assurance should have caught this issue. Low light performance was no better than the iPhone, while high-contrast performance was noticeably worse. The only redeeming feature of the ELPH 500 is its optical zoom and stronger flash. The back of the ELPH 500 is a good-looking large LCD touch screen. While the screen quality is great, the touch interface is pretty poor. It does the job, but its a huge step back compared to any smartphone. Most notably are the lack of multi-touch zoom and the inconsistent response to gestures. As the other reviews noted, battery life is inexcusably poor, running empty after about 150 pictures. We are returning this camera back to Amazon. If it doesn't produce significantly better pictures, there is absolutely zero point in owning a dedicated camera that is bigger, more expensive, lacks geotagging and has worse battery life than a smartphone.

Like many, I have a DSLR and a dedicated video camera, but wanted something smaller and pocketable that I could take with me everywhere. While I would have loved something in the category of a Canon S95 or S100, they are really so significantly out of my price range that they were out of the question as a second camera. The Nikon P300 was closer on price, and had a couple extra features the Elph 500 HS lacked, but for the money, the Elph 500 HS seemed to give me most of what I wanted so I thought I'd give it a try. Physically I love this camera. It feels solidly built. The brown color is a nice change from silver/black and it still looks like a serious camera. I like that there's a separate button for image review, which only warrants its separate button status because it also acts as a power button; if you press it while the power is off it turns on for image review but doesn't extend the lens. The camera is pretty heavy for its size; I don't mind it, but it's a bit too thick and heavy to carry in a shirt pocket. The one dislike I have about the controls is the zoom control which is a little small. Of course the main feature of this camera is the touch screen. I'm not a big fan of touch screens since physical buttons can often be operated by feel while you of course have to look closely at a touch screen to use it. I was a little bit concerned about how good this one would be, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. The screen is responsive enough as far as pressing buttons is concerned. Any operations that involve dragging your finger across the screen I find a little frustrating. But overall, the enhanced capabilities offered by the touch screen (such as touch focusing, being able to quickly select an image to view, and being able to reassign virtual buttons) really outweigh the occasional menu annoyance. The little mini-stylus provided on the wrist strap might be helpful to some but I don't use it. I am pretty happy with the low-light performance, which was one of the key features for me since I'm not a fan of indoor flash. Between all the various features of the camera, I can get away without a flash more often than I can on my DSLR, which is good because the Elph's lens partially blocks the flash at close distances. I really love the image stabilization. It makes a HUGE difference for both stills and video. There is even a slow-sync flash to help with those low-light flash exposures, so you can expose both the subject and background properly as well as employ some creative techniques. Some of the low-light (or high-speed) modes are rather gimmicky in my opinion because they reduce the resolution to 3MP but in some cases you don't care. I was looking for some amount of manual control. The Elph 500 has a (relatively narrow) exposure override, aperture priority and shutter priority modes, but few options for available shutter speeds and apertures, so it's somewhat limited in flexibility, and without a physical controls (like a jog wheel or dial) it can be a little tedious to select your settings. I also find the 15-sec max exposure time to be a bit arbitrary and limiting. I guess I can understand the lack of 'bulb' setting since there's no remote shutter release. There is no manual focus other than locking the focus on infinity, but touch focusing, possibly assisted by AF lock, mostly replaces manual focus. Auto mode takes some getting used to. I think people expect a failproof 'auto' mode, but the reality is that cameras do not necessarily always make the same decisions a photographer would make. This is why the manual modes are handy to have, and I think in a lot of cases it's also why people can be disappointed in how their pictures turn out if they shoot in full auto. It is possible, for example, for the camera to choose a focus point that you wouldn't choose, but that's why it SHOWS you what it's focused on, it can show you a zoomed-in closeup of that area, and you can override the camera's choice if you want. Another example - auto white balance can result in changing white balance across a series of shots if lighting conditions change slightly. Full auto often results in a great picture, just not always! Basically I would suggest it takes some practice to learn how to make the camera take the shot you want, even in full auto. Some really great time-saving features: I love the ability to scroll through pictures by tapping on the side of the camera, so that you can keep your fingers away from the screen. I like being able to put some particular often-used functions (like ISO setting) in unused 'button' spaces on the touch screen. Blink detection actually turns out to be pretty handy, quicker than trying to look closely at faces yourself after you take every shot. The battery charges quickly (but of course it runs down quickly too). Power-on delay is short, zooming is quick, and focusing is reasonably fast. Some things I don't really care for: as many have said, the door covering the USB and other ports is horrible, but I personally don't use those ports, preferring to pop the card out and transfer everything to my computer, rather than print directly from the camera (which works great though), plug the camera into the computer, or view images/movies directly on my tv. Some of the shooting modes are not really that useful, either because they reduce the resolution to accomplish them, they don't work particularly well, or they are special effects that would be better applied in post-processing rather than a permanent part of your shot, but I guess they're there for people who do not want to have to do any post-processing. The super-slow-mo movies are rather gimmicky and the quality is really ragged but my kids LOVE watching themselves be silly in slow motion. Overall I think it was a good choice. I personally wouldn't want this as my ONLY camera, and it's probably a bit of overkill for a really casual photographer for whom a $100 model would do fine, but it works great and fits my needs perfectly.

This camera replaces an old Panasonic Lumix I have, the DMC-LZ2. A great camera in its day, but bulky and I found myself not wanting to carry it. Plus it was getting harder to upload pictures. So I began a search for a new pocket camera. My primary criteria was excellent low light performance. I work in theater, backstage in the dark, and occasionally want to capture what life in blue light looks like. I also never use a flash, no matter the situation. So the CMOS sensor in the Elph 500 appealed to me. I also considered every other Elph: the 100, 300, and 310 HS. Those models are great, but so small! I'm a tactile person and how something feels is important to me. I'd not considered this camera till it went on sale as a lightning deal, and I decided to take a chance. I'm glad I did! The ELPH 500 HS feels substantial for its small size. The beveled edge makes it easy to hold. Most importantly, it takes great pictures! I tested it in low light and got excellent results. The mode that's most useful is Handheld Night scene. If you set the camera in automatic, in low light situations, it'll often choose that. How smart! You can trust the camera in the Automatic setting. I also like the menu navigation. I was able to mute the camera with no difficulty after reading the Quick Start guide. I really enjoy the touch screen interface. It's not like an iPhone, but the result is that you won't make accidental inputs. When you choose something you have to mean it! Tap with intention. The only con so far is minor: the lens cover is loose when closed. That concerned me. I checked the display model at another store and it was the same: loose. But it doesn't affect the performance. PROS: -Excellent performance in low light -good build quality -Fast start up -Easy to import photos. I use iPhoto -I enjoy the touch screen navigation -Takes beautiful video CONS: -Loose lens cover So far I love this camera! I always have it with me, and as the pros say, the best camera is the one you have on you.

This camera takes great low light and wide angle pictures. We found it very easy to use with a very responsive touch screen and sensble user interface.

Purchased this camera before going on vacation. I was really satisfied with the shipping, I received it quickly. As well, I was really satisfied with the camera itself. I was able to take good pictures and shoot videos while on vacation.

Just what I wanted & it came rally quickly.