To the left are sample shots that showcase the camera's field of view at wide-angle and full telephoto. When zooming quickly from wide-angle to full telephoto, the camera's autofocus system searches a tiny bit from midrange to full zoom, but generally locks focus on faraway subjects within a second. The camera's optical stabilization system works well in steadying shots, as long as it's dealing with a relatively normal amount of hand shakiness. You'll need to at least attempt to hold the camera steady; using a flat surface or a tripod, if possible, is always a good idea.

The camera can extend beyond its 12X optical zoom range to a simulated 21X digital zoom, although you will see a loss of detail and paintlike pockmarking at larger sizes in shots taken with the digital zoom enabled.

The PowerShot Elph 520 HS also has a Program mode that lets you set ISO (100 to 3200), white balance presets, and light-metering presets (evaluative, centered, and spot metering), as well as Canon's full boat of specialized shooting modes. You can preview and apply a few fun filter effects as you're shooting, such as a tilt-shift-simulating Miniature Mode, a Toy Camera filter, and a fish-eye lens effect.

To eke the most out of the PowerShot Elph 520 HS's 10-megapixel backside-illuminated CMOS sensor, you can turn to a couple of low-light scene modes available in the camera's menus. Handheld Night Scene mode stacks three shots taken in rapid succession at different exposure settings to create an HDR-like photo that brings out detail in darker scenes. Low-Light mode jacks up the ISO and uses pixel binning to increase light sensitivity while reducing resolution to 2.5 megapixels.

Of those two modes, Handheld Night Scene performed much better in my hands-on tests, producing more-accurate white balance and sharper contrast in low-light scenes. That said, both modes' images suffered from noise and a decrease in detail when we viewed the results at larger sizes (you can see sample shots taken in each mode above).