I’ve been using this camera for quite some time and I can assure that this one is far better than any dSLR one can find in this price bracket. Moreover, the image results are damn good, colours are crisp, bright and just what one can expect from a dSLR.
This camera is pretty decent for beginners. Its easy to use with the Auto mode even for an amateur. But if you want to utilize the full power of the camera the manual mode is perfect! With the IS lens your pictures won’t go blurry even taking pictures at low shutter speed(without tripod). I would say this is the perfect buy if you are planning for an SLR.
Image quality:
On Low ISO(100-400) image quality is Very good as expected.
On moderately high ISO(800-1600) image quality is good and noise level is very low.
On high ISO(3200+) image quality is quite good and noise level is also low but visible.
So on my opinion this camera is very good response on light and better image processing.
Video quality:
I have not check this feature as I wanted this camera only for image shooting.
Auto focus:
On moderate light it work very good, but in low light sometimes auto focus don’t work well and need to switch to manual focus which is again great.
Image stabilize(IS):
This works great as canon provide lens level image stabilization. While taking snap if your hand shake then also it will take care of it. But if you expect that it will work against long exposure time then it won’t work well.