This first shot was taken with the SX1 IS under bright light at its lowest 80 ISO sensitivity and therefore represents ideal conditions. The SX1 IS’s 28mm equivalent coverage has captured a noticeably larger field of view than the S5 IS could at 36mm. The crops are sharp and detailed, although like the SX10 IS at 80 ISO, there’s already a sprinkling of very fine noise in the shadow areas – nothing to be overly concerned with though. Again like the SX10 IS, there’s a little fringing around areas of high contrast.

Landscape: 5.39MB, Program, 1/1000, f4, ISO 100, 5-100mm at 5mm (equivalent to 28mm)

						Another shot under bright light with the lens at 28mm, but now with the sensitivity at 100 ISO. This was taken virtually at ground level, where the flip-out monitor made composition much easier. Once again there’s plenty of detail, although also a slight increase in noise textures in shadows or areas of flat colour like the blue sky. There’s also some fringing in high contrast areas. Interestingly, the same scenes taken with the SX10 IS look a little punchier, but otherwise, both cameras have a very similar style.

Landscape: 4.87MB, Program, 1/500, f5.7, ISO 200, 5-100mm at 100mm (equivalent to 560mm)

560mm pulls-in distant detail, but the increase to 200 ISO reduces fine detail. Crops from the edges also reveal fringing.

This shot was taken from pretty much the same location as the second image in this Gallery and illustrates the flexibility of the range.

A return to 80 ISO in this shot also reminds us how much better the quality is at this lowest sensitivity.

The face detection locked-on, although even with a relatively long focal length and the maximum aperture, the depth of field remains quite large. For more of a blurred background, you’ll need to zoom-in closer and ensure the background is really distant.

As with the earlier 200 ISO sample, the crops are fairly detailed, but exhibit textures through noise, in flat or shadow areas.

Given the extreme nature of this mode, there’s some softening and coloured fringing away from the centre. You may achieve better-corrected results (albeit not as magnified) in normal macro from a little further back.

The boost in sensitivity has seen a visible increase in noise textures, again particularly in shadows or flat areas of colour. In our ISO tests, we found the SX1 IS suffered from fractionally greater noise at each sensitivity setting than the SX10 IS, but it’s not a huge difference by any means.

Note: despite face detection locking-onto the subject, the camera has underexposed them. To be fair, this was without a flash though.

As you’d expect, there’s a significant increase in noise levels here, although again it’s similar to the 100% views from the G10 and SX10 IS under roughly the same conditions if you check their galleries.

There’s still a fair degree of fine detail present here, but you’d only want to use this for small prints.

The colours are less saturated as a whole, and viewing at 100% reveals undesirable noise and processing artefacts.

As such 1600 ISO is a step too far for the SX1 IS and should only be used for small online images or emergency situations.

The SX1 IS also offers a 3200 ISO option at 2 Megapixels, but it ain’t pretty. See our High ISO Noise Results.