Introduction

Ease of Use

The Canon PowerShot SX170 IS (‘Image Stabilised’), baby brother to the simultaneously introduced SX510HS, resembles a miniature digital SLR but in fact packs a 16x optical zoom (32x digital zoom) into a chassis that will fit readily into the pocket of your jacket, or that of your jeans at a squeeze. We had the version in for review that sports an eye-catching, wine coloured matt finish, though there’s also a regulation issue black option. Manufacturer’s suggested retail price is £169.99, though street prices will inevitably be cheaper still (around £150 at the time of writing). Maximum resolution is 16 megapixels from a standard issue 1/2.3-inch CCD, as opposed to CMOS, sensor.

In updating the SX170 IS from 2012, this presumably family-orientated travel zoom/super zoom with a lens reach starting out at a wideangle 28mm equivalent (running up to 448mm in 35mm terms at the telephoto end), squeezes in a flash above the lens that needs to be manually raised before it will fire. The other top plate controls are a familiar shooting mode dial with the usual division of creative P/A/S/M and fully automatic options, including the 32 scenes recognizing ‘Smart Auto’ mode, adjacent raised shutter release button encircled by a lever for controlling the flash, plus an on/off power button sitting just behind it.

Press this and the SX170 IS readies itself for action in around 2-3 seconds, which is roughly the same time it takes its zoom lens to whirr from maximum wideangle to extreme telephoto in stills mode. Happily the optical zoom can also be deployed once video recording has commenced, but here it takes a more leisurely 9-10 seconds to move through the same focal range. Though there is some operational noise picked up by the microphone as the zoom does its stuff, it’s kept at a reasonably low level that would be drowned out in busier environments.

Unusually perhaps for a camera that is pretty much your standard point and shoot – just one with a longer than average lens reach – stereo microphones sit either side of the lens at the front, with a speaker set into the far left hand edge of the top plate (if the camera is viewed from the rear). At the back for shot composition and replay is a regular issue 4:3 ratio 3-inch LCD screen with so-so 230k dots resolution and operational controls ranged to the right of it. This control layout will be immediately familiar to any recent Canon snapshot (either PowerShot or IXUS) user.

Front	Rear

Very top right on the backplate, just right of a resting place for the thumb of the right hand, is a video record button for nigh instantly activating HD ‘movie’ recording. In showing its budget ‘credentials’ the SX170 IS offers just 1280x720 pixels clips, rather than the Full HD 1920x1080 pixels resolution of most models these days. Directly below this button, and like it slightly inset, is a means of retrieving clips or stills. This playback button forms one of a quartet of identically sized buttons sitting either above or below a centrally placed function/set button. This one is in turn encircled by a scroll wheel come multi-directional control pad; another familiar operational device.

Top left of this and next to the playback button we discover a button for accessing/controlling exposure (+/- 2EV), whilst below it another button pairing for the self-explanatory ‘display’ and ‘menu’. Thankfully in this being a Canon PowerShot, the buttons are large enough and well spaced enough for accessing with the pad of your thumb, rather than requiring fiddly fingertip precision.

Both flanks of the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS provide a lug for attaching a provided wrist strap, whilst the right hand side – if the SX170 continues to be viewed from the back – features a black plastic flap protecting a single AV/USB output port. There is no wireless Wi-Fi image transferal option with the SX170 IS; at least not a built-in option.

Whereas once a camera of this ilk would have been powered by a couple of AAs (as indeed the previous SX160 IS was), on the updated version we thankfully get a rechargeable lithium ion battery provided that slots into the base of what is a subtly raised handgrip – its compartment also including a slot for optional SD card. Canon has further seen fit to provide a proper standalone charger and mains lead – a welcome addition, when many lower priced cameras are now just coming bundled with a USB lead and similarly equipped plug to connect the camera directly to a power source. At the base of the PowerShot sits a slightly off-centre screw thread for attaching it to a tripod; again, so standard issue.

Front	Top

Press the on/off button and this JPEG-only Canon whirrs into action, lens barrel extending from within its protective housing sound-tracked by its mechanics to arrive at maximum wideangle setting before the rear screen blinks into life. Naturally said LCD, which offers a fairly bog standard resolution of 230k dots, is the only means here of composing and reviewing photos and video; there is no eye-level viewfinder like you’d find on the DSLRs and bridge cameras that the SX170’s design consciously gives the nod to. Still, the LCD here does offer 100% coverage.

The raised shutter release button is nice and springy. But that being said a gentle squeeze enables the user to readily find its ‘bite point’ and for the camera to quickly determine focus and exposure before pressing down fully to take the shot. There are 10 shooting modes on the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS to choose from, with the smart ‘auto’ option the one most visibly highlighted in green. By contrast we also get the familiar program, aperture priority, shutter priority and manual modes.

Added to these are a Live View mode, allowing easy exposure and colour adjustment by the user: for example using an on screen slider summoned up via the function/set button to alternate between dark and light, neutral and vivid and cool and warm. Selectable ISO settings range from ISO100 to a maximum ISO1600 – so nothing particularly flashy in this respect. Maximum aperture is f/3.5, so not particularly suite to low light work, despite the inclusion of the low light mode that reduces pixel count to four megapixels to limit noise.

Next along the dial, one past the auto mode, is the scene mode setting. The selection accessible here is pretty basic. We get the standard Portrait mode, a Face Self Timer that starts ticking down when the camera registers a face has entered the frame, a low light four megapixel recording mode, a ‘snow’ shooting mode, plus a fireworks mode. These are all selectable via the very familiar Canon compact range toolbar presented on the left hand side of the screen.

Memory Card Slot	Battery Compartment

The next option on the dial is slightly more exciting in allowing us access to digital effects applied at the point of capture. Here we get a familiar fish eye effect, the de rigeur tilt and shift lens ape-ing miniature effect, a pinhole camera ape-ing toy camera effect, monochrome option, super vivid colour option plus poster effect. More unusually perhaps there are several image ratio options on this camera: the familiar 4:3 and 16:9 are joined by 3:2 and more surprisingly 1:1.

Continuing clockwise around the 10 option dial we come to a ‘discreet’ mode which deactivates operational bleeps and shutter sound for more convert, or shall we say, candid shooting. Last but not least on the dial is a dedicated video option, which like with stills provides access to Canon’s My Colours settings, white balance, plus, for video, the option to switch from HD capture to standard definition 640x480 pixels and back again.

The Canon PowerShot SX170 IS is light and small enough to shoot one-handed with, though it naturally feels like both hands is the better solution when attempting photography toward the telephoto end of the zoom. Official dimensions are 108x71x43.9mm and it weighs 251g; so it’s solid despite the plastic construction and without feeling a dead weight.

The included lithium ion battery, which shares a port with removable SD card media at the camera’s base is good for 300 shots from a full charge according to CIPA testing, which is fairly good for a pocket snapshot. But what of the pictures the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS produces? Can they also be summed up in such glowing terms?

Image Quality

Though the pocket-sized Canon PowerShot SX170 IS has obviously taken its design cues from a digital SLR, the pictures this PowerShot delivers cannot hope to ape its much larger look-a-like. This, then, is really best summed up as your average snapshot camera that just happens to have a larger than average zoom reach, after all.

Whilst 28mm equivalent wideangle images appear sharp enough, albeit not escaping altogether from familiar compact camera bugbears such as purple pixel fringing, shots taken from the same vantage point, handheld, at maximum telephoto can unsurprisingly appear soft, even with built-in image stabilisation provided to counter the blurring effect of any hand wobble.

In terms of metering the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS is fairly unsophisticated; if you want foreground detail then be prepared to be presented with washed-out looking skies; or if you want cloud detail in a landscape picture then be prepared for murky looking foregrounds. OK, so we were using the camera during a particularly dull and overcast period; but still it is possible to get sufficiently well saturated colours that still visibly ‘pop’ in your frame.

We were also lucky enough to be able to properly try out the camera’s fireworks scene mode at an annual display and achieve much better, more blur-free results than were achievable with the camera left to its smart auto devices. And our test images were shot hand held too.

For low light shooting in general though it must be said that the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS isn’t the best suited; for starters the ISO range tops out at a maximum ISO1600 which is the kind of range snapshot cameras were offering a decade ago. Also, noise/grain starts to intrude from ISO400 in shadow areas if you’re looking for it, spreading across the whole of the frame, if subtly so, at ISO800. At ISO1600, even without enlarging areas to check, we’re visibly losing detail as noise reduction kicks in. Whilst images taken at this setting are still usable, it seems to have been wise for Canon not to stretch the ISO range further to ISO3200.

Noise

There are 5 ISO settings available on the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each ISO setting.

ISO 100 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)
ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)
ISO 1600 (100% Crop)

Focal Range

The Canon PowerShot SX170 IS's 16x zoom lens offers a versatile focal range, as illustrated by these examples:

28mm	448mm

Sharpening

Here are two 100% crops which have been Saved as Web - Quality 50 in Photoshop. The right-hand image has had some sharpening applied in Photoshop.

Original (100% Crop)	Sharpened (100% Crop)

Chromatic Aberrations

The Canon PowerShot SX170 IS handled chromatic aberrations fairly well during the review, with some purple fringing present around the edges of objects in certain high-contrast situations, as shown in the examples below.

Chromatic Aberrations 1 (100% Crop)	Chromatic Aberrations 2 (100% Crop)

Macro

The Canon PowerShot SX170 IS offers a Macro setting that allows you to focus on a subject that is 1cm away from the camera when the lens is set to wide-angle. The first image shows how close you can get to the subject (in this case a compact flash card). The second image is a 100% crop.

Macro	Macro (100% Crop)

Flash

The flash settings on the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS are Auto, Manual Flash On / Off, Slow Synchro and Red-Eye Reduction. These shots of a white coloured wall were taken at a distance of 1.5m.

Flash Off - Wide Angle (28mm)	Flash On - Wide Angle (28mm)
Flash Off - Telephoto (448mm)	Flash On - Telephoto (448mm)

And here are some portrait shots. As you can see, neither the Flash On or the Red-eye Flash settings caused any red-eye.

Flash On	Flash On (100% Crop)
Red-eye Reduction	Red-eye Reduction (100% Crop)

Night

The Canon PowerShot SX170 IS's maximum shutter speed is 15 seconds in the Manual shooting mode, which is good news if you're seriously interested in night photography. The shot below was taken using a shutter speed of 1 second at ISO 400.

Night	Night (100% Crop)

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS camera, which were all taken using the 16 megapixel Superfine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample Movie & Video

As of February 2025, we are no longer providing full size sample images or videos for download.

Please contact us if you have any feedback on our new policy.

Product Images

Front of the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS

Front of the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS / Lens Extended

Front of the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS / Pop-up Flash

Side of the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS

Side of the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS

Rear of the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS

Rear of the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS / Turned On

Top of the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS

Top of the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS / Lens Extended

Bottom of the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS

Side of the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS

Side of the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS

Front of the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS

Battery Compartment

Memory Card Slot

Conclusion

The new inclusion of rechargeable lithium ion battery rather than bog standard AAs aside, the 16 megapixel Canon PowerShot SX170 IS doesn’t appear massively altered from its SX160 IS forebear. So if you like your pocket travel zooms to look a little bit more traditional, and aren’t bothered about flashier ‘extras’ such as built-in GPS or Wi-Fi, then the snapshot-quality SX170 IS may suit anyone who doesn’t want to spend a king’s ransom to drag faraway subjects that much closer.

Be advised though that whilst the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS may look like a miniaturized DSLR the resultant image quality of this compact doesn’t even come close. Fine though it may be for everyday snapping, if you want shots that stand further apart from what a decent smartphone can produce, then spending a little extra for a camera with a better quality sensor and a few more bells and whistles is recommended.

That said, the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS’ build and performance is acceptable given its asking price, so those who have little to spend will find equally little to complain about. Though picture quality is a little so-so for our tastes, at least the camera looks good and feels good in the palm, which at this currently contracting budget end of the market actually counts for quite a lot.

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	3.5
Features	4
Ease-of-use	4
Image quality	3.5
Value for money	4

Main Rivals

Listed below are some of the rivals of the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS.

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Canon PowerShot SX170 IS from around the web.

Specifications

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