Over-all great experience with this camera

Author's Rating:

Pros: Image Quality, Manual settings, Macro, overall functionality

Cons: flash charge time, graininess on high ISO settings, light distribution

The Bottom Line: 
I would definitely recommend this camera for anyone who wants a quality camera without spending $1000.

Author's Review
I bought this camera last summer, shortly before travelling abroad for a semester. I wanted a cheaper camera (less than $150) in case I lost it, but I couldn't bear to settle for lousy quality. I tried two other cameras before I finally settled on this one. The Kodak I kept for about three days before giving up, and the Fujifilm lasted ten minutes before I packed it back up. The Canon SX120 IS was love at first sight, and six months later I still am glad of my purchase.

It wasn't too expensive, but it still has plenty of quality. It can handle difficult lighting and weather situations, as I have used it in the rain, at night, while running... It did, of course, have SOME issues with those -- but nothing that the many manual settings couldn't overcome. I still ended up with a lot of pictures that I am very pleased with. This is saying a lot since I am an avid photographer and a perfectionist.

The nice features of this camera are:
--Great image quality most of the time
--plenty of manual settings, such as shutter speed, aperature settings, iso, etc.
--can take non-blurry pictures in low light settings
--Great zoom
--good quality macro setting

The less-than perfect things:
--It has a tendency to focus on one thing for selecting the lighting. Try taking a picture of yourself in front of a bright window and you'll either be a sillouhet with a seeable background, or you'll be visable with a bright white background. It is very difficult to get it to see both.
--The flash takes FOREVER to recharge. I didn't use it much, but when I did it was always frustrating.
--In extremely low light settings (like taking a picture of something in the middle of the night without flash), while it CAN take pictures while many other cameras can't, it comes at a price. If the flash isn't used, while the pictures turn out clear and unblurry, they are grainy. It is great for capturing a memory of something that you wouldn't otherwise see, but don't expect to win any photo contests with them.

There are some issues that you'll need to work around, but they are capable of being worked around.

Overall, it is a great camera and I would recommend it to anyone.