The Canon A80
Digital Camera
One of my favourite things to do on the computer is to mess about with my photos and videos and my choice of digital camera was the Canon Powershot A80.
I have owned the Canon Powershot A80 (4.0 mega pixels) for just over a year now. I must admit that I am extremely happy with the quality of the pictures it takes in all weather conditions.
It is my first experience with digital cameras and I did a lot of painstaking research before I eventually decided on this model from our local photography shop. I was going to go for a Fuji of around the same spec but slightly more expensive, but the salesman took me outside on a very wet and misty Saturday afternoon, took a shot of the street, and then did an example print-out from the A80 and the Fuji for me, the reproduction of the colours of the Canon far outshone the Fuji. So the Canon it was to be, and I pushed a bit of a hard deal and got a free carry case thrown in – well worth it to barter! It can be fun and save you money!
Power.
Installing the batteries was very straightforward, but they lost all
their power when I was fiddling about with the camera at home in no time at
all. This was disappointing, so I decided it had to be rechargeable AA
batteries, which I purchased eight of the very next day – the camera takes
4. A niggle I have discovered since with
regard to the batteries is that there is no visible warning when the batteries
are about to expire – the camera just stops working. The other niggle is that
if just one of the batteries is slightly below par (I purchased a battery
tester), the camera will also conk out.
Memory.
The camera uses a CF (compact flash) card and came with just a 32 meg
capacity, which doesn’t hold many
pictures at the camera’s highest setting.
A quick visit to ebay though and I won myself a 256 meg. CF card for
£25including postage, This card will store 123 pictures in the highest
resolution.
Controls:
I found the controls to set up different shooting conditions a bit
fiddly and even now I tend carry the user guide in my pocket. It is however, very comprehensive and easy
to follow.
Things that impressed me…
The Powershot A80 has a 3X optical zoom lens with a digital zoom to take
it up to 11X (in combination with the
optical zoom). It has 14 shooting modes
and I must say, Canon’s technology comes up trumps when it comes to
true-to-life image reproduction.
What I found particularly good, was that at the touch of a button, I could remove an adapter ring around the lens to fit optional wide angle or telephoto lenses for even greater versatility.
This camera is also quite fast and has a continuous shooting facility, but this is another thing I tend not to use, but I imagine it would be useful for taking shots of babies or animals who tend not to want to pose – if you took continuous shots for a few minutes, there is bound to be the “right” shot for the album amongst them.
I found the camera very light and comfortable to use even with the batteries installed and will fit easily into my pocket. It has a LCD monitor that swivels to the left and right and through 180 degrees (which means you can take a picture of yourself with full view of your shot), and a conventional viewfinder for when the brightness of the sun shines into the monitor.
To use this camera, I would recommend that you carry plenty of charged AA batteries and switch it off when not taking shots. If used in this way, there’d be no problems should it suddenly lose power. I have found that the camera happily took shots for a whole day on the same batteries. But I wish there was a better low-power warning system, but that’s the only complaint I have.
If I had to make the choice again, I would opt for the Canon.
Click here for more Website & Computer Hardware/Sofware Reviews