Canon PowerShot ELPH 510 HS Touchscreen Pocket Superzoom Camera

Canon announced three new compact PowerShot digital cameras today. The most exciting of the three – to me, anyway – is the new Canon PowerShot ELPH 510 HS pocket superzoom. I’m really into pocket superzoom cameras and I believe this is the first superzoom Canon has included in their ultra-compact ELPH point-and-shoot camera line. The 12-megapixel PowerShot ELPH 510 HS shoots 1080p full HD video as well as still photos and Canon’s HS System gives them both great low light image quality. The lens is a 12x 28 to 336mm (35mm equivalent) optical zoom and the camera’s 0.86-inch thick body makes it the world’s thinnest digital camera with a 12x wide-angle zoom lens. If that’s not enough to make you put in your pre-order, Canon also gave it a 3.2-inch touch screen LCD display with Touch Shutter – just touch the screen and the camera focuses where you touched and takes the picture!

As I said, I really like pocket superzoom cameras. For the past year, I’ve carried a pocket superzoom camera with me almost everywhere. Last fall I bought the Canon PowerShot SD4500 HS, the first pocket-sized HS System superzoom camera from Canon (Canon PowerShot SD4500 HS Pro Review). The image quality was great for such a small camera and the lens had crazy reach. The only thing I really didn’t like was the 35mm wide end of the zoom – it just wasn’t wide enough. Since then I replaced the SD4500 HS with the Canon SX230 HS pocket superzoom (Canon PowerShot SX230 HS Intro), which appears to use the same 12x zoom lens and 12-megapixel sensor as the new ELPH 510 HS. If the lens and sensor are the same, then I can personally vouch for the great image quality of the new ELPH 510 HS camera. The PowerShot ELPH 510 HS also has a 7.8- FPS High-Speed Burst Mode, Smart AUTO with 32 shooting scenes and Canon’s new Intelligent IS, which, “automatically chooses from six different modes (Normal, Macro, Panning Dynamic, Powered and Tripod) to optimize image stabilization.” The new ELPH 510 HS may not have manual exposure modes like the SX230 HS, but it’s smaller and faster and the touch screen LCD is very cool.

The new Canon PowerShot ELPH 510 HS pocket superzoom camera is scheduled to be in stores in October. It will be available in red, black and silver and should sell for $349.99. To learn more about pocket superzoom cameras and compare the new Canon PowerShot ELPH 510 HS, make sure to read our pocket superzoom camera guide.

Canon PowerShot ELPH 510 HS Press Release >>