As we've told you in our article regarding Canon's G12 camera, we've recently had the chance to attend a local Canon even where we've got some hands-on time with some of the latest digital cameras the company launched over the past couple of weeks, including here the PowerShot SX30 IS super-zoom camera, that provides some pretty nifty features for those advanced amateur photographers that are looking for a device that will let them capture beautiful images from large distances, but are not yet ready to move to a DSLR and dedicated telephoto lens.

As far as super-zoomers are concerned, the PowerShot SX30 IS really is a top-range camera, allowing users to take very good quality, crisp photos, while in the same time being quite far from the subject.

Unfortunately, as is the case with the other Canon products we've experienced live, the available amount of time to spend with these gadgets was pretty short and for this reason, we'll talk a bit more about the design features as follows, hoping that we'll get the cameras for a full, in-depth review at a later date.

First of all, the exterior design is quite OK if you've correctly set your level of expectations, the quality of the build and the size making the SX30 IS quite nice to use, in all conditions.

Most of the controls (including a new, DSLR-inspired control wheel) are placed on the right side of the camera, but that's because the digicam comes equipped with a very versatile swiveling display.

This seems to be quite a hot trend these days, and it's quite likely that it will become the standard in just a couple of years' time.

Before moving on the other features the SX30 IS has in store, we'll have to mention that we really did love the dedicated Zoom Framing Assist button.

What this control does is instantly switch from ultra-zoom to wide when pressed, thus allowing users to easily recapture the subject, when going out of frame (doing so with a super-zoomer at maximum tele is extremely difficult, otherwise).

Another feature we really liked was the relatively high level of stability the camera provides, even when pushing the zoom towards the maximum value of the telephoto range, the internal stabilization system managing to do a pretty good job against the inherent hand-shaking and its effects on photos, especially at such large distances.

We won't go into more details regarding this thing's overall features and specs (you can find these pieces of information in our previous article on the topic of the SX30 IS), but we'll have to say that if you're out shopping for a super-zoom compact digital camera than can also record very good-quality videos, the PowerShot SX30 IS should certainly get to the top of your short list.