I've seen numerous test and real-world shots from the SX60. Most look very soft, have halos around them, and generally have terrible image quality. But I've also seen a couple of very sharp shots. Now, Imaging Resource has given the SX50 the number 3 award for the hyperzoom category, over the SX60!
When I examine the SX60 shots at full telephoto, they don't look soft in the traditional sense of lens aberrations. They look out of focus. Is it possible that there's a firmware or hardware fault in the first batch of SX60's that make them focus innaccurately at the long end?
They are also very noisy, and the noise reduction used is very heavy-handed. However, it's hard to tell if it looks like that because the camera is over-sharpening the out-of-focus images and then smearing that detail, or if the lens is just soft and the sensor is just noisy.
It's hard for me to look at these shots and believe that this is the performance Canon intended, especially following the SX50, which is sharp as a tack at the long end.
Is there a recall, or a firmware update planned? As I said, there are some very sharp shots from the SX60 at the long end around, but they are pretty rare. It looks like, if there is a fault, it either does it most of the time, or it affects most of the cameras.
I'd love to have one. I have an SX50, and it's good, but for what I do, the horrible EVF and the lack of 60p are pretty serious penalties (I primarily use it for video on very fast objects). On paper, the SX60 fixes both problems, but it has created this new one, which I didn't expect given Canon's track record of releasing products that work properly.
