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Hi. I'm Lori Grunin, senior editor with CNET, and this is the Canon PowerShot SX10-IS, now the middle model in Canon's megazoom camera line. The SX10-IS offers a nice combination of a long lens with an enthusiast-level feature set, for the most part. Unfortunately, Canon decided features like RAW support and HD video belonged in an even more expensive model, the SX-1. It's got a 20X zoom lens, which isn't as long as lot of the ones we've seen for 2009, but frankly, I think it's long enough. The drawback of the lens is that it's pretty slow. The maxim aperture, when it's all the way zoomed out, is 5.7. That's a lot slower than competing lenses that go even further. However, it's pretty sharp, especially in the center, and it delivers a pretty nice, distortion-free photo. It includes the flip and twist LCD. Unfortunately, it's a 2.5-inch, which makes it smaller than a lot of the competing LCDs. It has this really nice curved grip design, and a very big grip, because it runs off four double A batteries. I have mixed feelings about the control design and layout on this cameral. For instance, it has a dedicated record button for its VGA-quality movies, which is nice and something a lot of cameras are doing. I also like the dial for navigating things like shutter speeds, aperture, exposure compensation, and so on. Unfortunately, the feel of the dial doesn't seem to correspond one-to-one with the movement. The other thing is some of the labels can be hard to see, especially in low light. The photo quality is generally pretty good. Megazooms tend to not have the best image quality because it's hard to get a good image when the lens has to cover such a broad range of focal lanes. And while it's not the zippiest camera in the barn, it's fast compared to a lot of its competitors. If you're looking for a solid megazoom that will give you good image quality and decent performance, the SX10-IS won't disappoint. I'm Lori Grunin, and this is the Canon PowerShot SX10-IS.
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