All were taken through a fixed-glass, dual-paned window with outside smudges after 8 yrs), mainly to see:

  (1) if this wide-angled camera with 20x zoom on a pocket-sized camera is effective when needing a long lens
  (2) how well it does in low light using higher ISO, and
  (3) whether or not I can avoid blown-out areas in jpgs on high-contrast days when using a small camera.  These are learning exercises for me.

They're casual tests of the Canon SX260 HS.   This camera has a lens with a range from 25mm to 500mm (35mm equivalent).  The zoom is 20x, and I'm hoping the small sensor having only 12 Megapixels to deal with will help avoid some noise problems.  So far, it does pretty well on that.

  The digital zoom, said to be more like Sony's Clear Image, doesn't produce any tighter detail than most other digital zooms I've tried (the Sony's RX100 Clear Image does relatively good interpolation instead of cropping and zooming in even more), and supposedly the Canon does interpolation too, but the image was quite degraded so I turned it off.

  With a good lens, superceding the SX230 HS, the Canon SX260 HS was listed at $349 in April 2012 and is currently selling for $249 at most online stores.   Amazon has been selling it for $214 though, and it's a bargain at that price, for a small camera with large zoom lens with good image stabilization.  That's a sale they have until April 27, 2013.

  However, its full-HD video (1080p) feature comes with audio that uses automatic level gain control, so in a quiet room, you can really hear the motor!  And zooming back out is especially loud.  I think that's one reason for the discounting, as otherwise it gets very good reviews from those who have used the Canon S95 and other better pocketable camera.

  There's No RAW mode and no custom settings you can save, which is how they kept the price down, I guess.  As a secondary camera that you can easily carry, with decent wider angle and 500mm-equivalent zoom, I do like it though.

  Good, thorough reviews at Imaging Resourcs and Photography blog for those interested in the details.

  I actually failed to notice, for two days (until I read about it in a reader-comments area) that the Default compression-setting is "Fine" (which is why I did a 3rd day of photo tests) but if you click on the settings-option and then go UP (rather than down as expected), there is an unexpected "Superfine" mode, which keeps much more image data, and the resulting files from that mode are 60% larger.  The detail is tighter, which you can tell when you view (or print) the original size before resizing it down for display.  Printing quality would be up'd when using Superfine mode.

  Superfine mode is available, though, only in Manual, Program, Aperture, and Shutter Speed priority modes.
  Most magazine reviewers haven't mentioned this but then judged the image-quality results from shooting just in the Default mode, the only one available when using the "Scene" options and a myriad of other automated features.  No mention is made of the higher-quality setting that would be important to camera-enthusiasts with non-automated modes.

  Even DPreview did a review using only the standard mode and said they'd not noticed there was a lower-compression mode and since then have said that after a quick look when a customer called this to their attention, that there's not much difference so they're not revising their review.

Added a few photos from Dec 11-12 when I noticed even more great skies.

  To see the images that are 1024 pixels wide for the thumbnails below, click on 'original' option below the first photo that comes up after you click on a thumbnail; otherwise, it defaults to 800 wide.