Same here, had my SX50 for 10 years until it started funny noises and finally jammed. Bought a new SX70 last year, which did not generate crisp pictures right from the start. Did send it in to Canon headquarters in Johannesburg, who did return it saying that they replaced the optics module. However, still not much improved images. I then decided to have my SX50 repaired by a local digital camera repair centre. It is now usable again, however, still sounds somewhat rough and am not sure how long it will last. The repair centre manager had a look at the SX70 also and said he did adjust the sharpening settings somewhat, but still image quality does not come close to the SX50 or my Samsung S20 Cell phone. Even my ancient SX10 gives sharper images!
The strange thing is that the SX70 viewfinder is sharp and clear showing all the details, but then taking the image it is not sharp and somewhat washed out. I always thought that the viewfinder uses the same chip as the camera, which indicates to me that it must be a software issue. The raw format, however, is not better.
Thinking of selling the SX70, but don’t know what to replace it with.
