Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have been using Canon cameras since around 2001 (this is probably the 10th Camera I have owned in the PowerShot series over that time-frame). We purchased this camera specifically for a trip to South Africa since we planned on taking several photos of animals in the wild at far distances, but didn't want to bring along something the size of a DSLR. First of all, I must say that the photos that this camera takes are nothing short of spectacular. The focus is crystal clear for most shots and the zoom is amazing for something that fits in a pocket. In my opinion, this camera took photos nearly as good as some of the DSLR cameras that other people in our tour group had. In fact, the owners of those DSLR cameras were shocked by the quality of this camera as well and have asked me to send them some photos of animals that came out blurry on their cameras but came out perfectly on this camera. The optics of this camera are very impressive given the wide range of zoom. Chromatic aberration is noticeable but not terrible on some images at full zoom. One minor issue is that the flash pops up and is in a very annoying area for most people (where most people place their left hand on the camera). I personally got used to holding the camera differently to get around the annoyance, but it is still a problem for when we ask someone else to take our photo. Now for the reason I gave this camera one star. This camera suffers from the same issue posted by numerous other reviewers where the camera immediately shuts down due to low battery while attempting to record video and using the zoom feature simultaneously. This happens even on a full charge (tested with several different batteries including the original). This is a well documented issue (do a web search for "canon sx280 battery problems" and you will see.). Removing the battery and reinserting it causes the battery meter to show a full charge again and the camera functions just fine until attempting to take video again where the problem repeats itself. Canon claims to have fixed the issue with a firmware patch. I performed the firmware update advised by Canon and verified that the new firmware was correctly installed however as other reviewers can confirm this still did not solve the problem. Note that the firmware update only requires a blank 32MB SD card, not an expensive 32GB SD card that other users have reported (big difference between price of an 32 MB card vs 32 GB). I have a theory that this problem is a design flaw at the hardware level that can not be fixed with software (firmware). It appears to be a hardware problem not correctable by any firmware updates caused by the battery voltage during times of high power draw (encoding the video plus zooming). Canon is very aware of the issue and so far has not recalled the camera. I am not sure why they are trying to sweep this issue under the rug at the expense of their reputation. Some people are reporting that the firmware update fixed the problems. Maybe that is true for cameras made after a specific date. According to the canon firmware update instructions, this problem affects cameras where the 6th digit of the serial number is lower than 3. The 6th digit on mine was a 2. So if you have one of these where the 6th digit is a 2 or lower and experience the same problem, then please return it to Canon and don't just "live" with the problem as I almost did. I ultimately returned the camera and will keep purchasing the same camera and returning it until I am one of the "lucky ones" with a 6th digit of a serial number greater than 2 so that I can have a fully working camera with video.