Main purpose of buying this superzoom: For
compact easy birding without the need to bring all the heavy barang barang.
My background: I have been using a old manual lens for birding (pentax 500mm 4.5 + 1.4x teleconvertor) mounted onto canon 500D. Everything is manual even exposure setting. Reason for using it is because I am not a hardcore birder, so I don't see the need to spend 5 digit investment in say 500 f4, 600f4 etc to get the beyond equivalent of 1000+ mm FL. However I am not knowledgeable about birds, where to hunt them especially at new places. So I am looking for something that gives me long FL range yet easy to carry around in order to walk around scouting for birds before I know where to park myself next time using the big gears. I was thrilled when canon announces SX50HS and Panasonic announces FZ200, both capable superzooms which probably is what I am looking for. Coming from someone who's having difficult time with full manual gear, having af auto exposure is already like god sent...so in my review if I praise something it might not be up to your standard, especially if you are already finding entry level dslr af system slow and is expecting like 5D III or 1DX af.
Field Test 1: Simple birding at Chinese Garden / Japanese Garden.
1. My gear I brought along: A Benro monopod (quite sturdy and has fat leg), a Sirui K30 ball head (might even be overkill for a compact bridge camera) and of course SX50HS. Brought a small bag (small toploader type to put extra battery etc)
2. Most of the time I don't frame through LCD screen, I uses it evf which is not really fantastic but still usable. Main thing about using EVF is to hold the camera in a more stable manner, and main purpose is to locate the object so having only 200k resolution is OKAY but more is better right? Having higher resolution of EVF might allow you to be more clear if the focusing is sharp. Etc, I want to focus sharp on the object's eye but having low resolution makes it not obviously clear if I have achieved what I want (The image in EVF is small also).
Under good light EVF is clear but the refresh rate is kinda slow....if you want to track fast objects then forget it. (Will do a video to demo evf if I have the time). Below is a sample of what you see through evf (taken using mobile phone)
I still prefer dslr's OVF, which is clearer as human eyes are still the best. But EVF has the advantage of checking your image output immediately and make adjustments (say exposure is way off, etc) without referring to LCD screen.
3. Battery life: I shot around 100 images, leaving the battery on throughout for 2.5 hours. The battery still have 2/3 left but I seldom uses LCD except to check on images. If you frame with the LCD on then battery life is not too great.