Digital Home Thoughts: Canon's New PowerShot SX200 IS

"Creating gorgeous images is more fun than ever with the sleek, impressively equipped PowerShot SX200 IS, elegantly designed in three new colors. Capture close-up, wide-angle shots with stunning 12x optical zoom. Experience the unprecedented image quality and point-and-shoot convenience of Smart AUTO, along with enhanced operability and an intuitive new menu. HD shooting at 1280 x 720 pixels with HDMI output lets you see all the beauty of your HD images and movies on your HDTV."

The stand-out features on the SX200 are the 12x optical zoom, the 720p video capture, and a big three inch screen. The lens also starts at a fairly wide 28mm, giving you decent wide-angle photos, and goes up to an impressive 336mm zoom. The biggest negative? As reader bwaibel shared in another thread, this camera uses a small 1/2.3-inch CCD sensor, which is quite a bit smaller than the 1/1.7 inch sensor that the SD 990 IS uses. It's frustrating that Canon puts buyers in the position of having to chose between image quality or zoom/720p video. I wonder why they couldn't use the bigger sensor? The SX1200 is expected to be available in March for an MSRP of $349.99 USD.