PowerShot A560 makes great gift

I purchased this camera as a gift for my dad, who has never used a digital camera before. So I’ll be writing this review from the standpoint of someone looking for a good gift. Some of the key factors were price, size, optical viewfinder and ease-of-use. This is an impressive camera for under $200. It even has a number of scene modes and manual settings for those who move beyond full automatic mode. I found this camera on sale for just $150! I've only used this for a few days, but I love this camera!

Camera size, layout, screen, and general info

This camera is a good size for someone with fairly large hands and for someone new to digital cameras. It’s also a little heavier, giving a little more solid feel and less of that cheap plastic feel like some of the low-end Kodak and HP cameras we looked at. This seems a better choice than the ultra-compact models. It fits in the hands nicely, without feeling like you’re having to carefully use your fingertips for everything

The A560 has a nice 2.5” screen, compared to a slightly smaller screen on many competing models that might be only a few dollars cheaper. The optical viewfinder is a “must have” in my opinion. There are just too many times when even the best LCD screen doesn’t to the trick when shooting outdoors in the sun. This is another reason we rules out many of the ultra-compact cameras.

The mode dial on the top of the camera is a nice size, being easy to read and control. Again, this was an important factor in a camera for a beginner. It does have more modes than some other low-end cameras, but I’m a fan of the various scene modes and it’s something that the user can grow into if they wish to move beyond full auto.

The zoom is controlled by a ring controller around the shutter button, which is very easy to use. It’s also an intuitive place to zoom in and out during playback, just as you would during shooting. There’s a separate on-off button.

As for the control buttons on the back of the camera, I do wish they they were just a tad bigger and more spread out since this is a bit larger of a camera than the Digital Elph series. On the other hand, the nice 2.5” screen does take up a good bit of room. My biggest complaint with the buttons on this camera is with the button for selecting shooting or playback mode. This is the first camera I’ve used where this is simply a soft button, rather than an actual switch or knob setting. I like a real switch much better. I think it would be much easier for a beginner since you can look at a physical switch or slider and see at any time which mode you’re in.

The A560 uses two standard AA batteries. It’s nice that this runs on just two, rather than four like some others. If using rechargeable batteries, this also means a lighter and more portable charger to carry.

Speed

In comparing to a few other sub-$200 cameras, the one thing that was immediately noticeable, even in quick testing in the store, was the fast response time. Sure enough, the specs showed that the A560 has less shutter lag than competing cameras in the price range. This might not seem like a major feature to look for in a camera for a first time user, but remember that someone moving to digital from film, they are used to an instant shutter. Who wants to miss shots because of the delay, or have blurry photos because they are not used to holding the camera still for a moment after pressing the shutter? This camera seems just as fast as my higher-end cameras. We compared to the Kodak Easyshare C653. The difference between the two was noticeable.

Menus and navigation

I’ve been a fan of the Canon menu system, as it seems fairly easy to use. There are a few things I don’t like with this model though. In the past, all flash modes were controlled by simply pressing the flash button, which is the right side of the 4-way controller. However, with this model, they’ve moved the red-eye reduction flash setting to the menu. It would be nice to tell a beginner that they can control all flash settings from a single button, but now there are two places. The only other issue that I’ve had with all Canon menu systems is that there are two main places to go to change settings. One is from the menu button, and the other is the function button. I still sometimes forget which functions start from which button. It would be nice, particularly for lower-end models, to combine these. But over all, I still think it’s easier to find things than with other menu systems I’ve used, like Fujifilm.

DIGIC III

This camera has Canon’s new DIGIC III processor. Not only is it a fast processor (which I’m sure contributes the camera’s fast response and rapid shooting rate), but it has a great new feature for face detection (actually, I'm told that face detection is more a function of the AF system than the DIGIC III). Yes, it really does work, and it works well! When enabled, this feature will look for faces as you compose your shot. It will put brackets around the faces on the screen so you can see what it’s detecting. It then adjusts focus, flash, and exposure so that the faces take priority, rather than surrounding objects, even if closer than the faces. I tested this with people in front of a window on a bright day – a surefire way to have dark faces and a backlit picture with almost any automatic camera. The A560 did a beautiful job! I also tested this feature with a group and using full optical zoom. My kids were singing in the kid’s choir at church and I was several rows back. Even at full zoom, and with a group of faces taking only a small portion of the screen, the camera was still able to identify a group of faces and properly focus and expose them.

Another nice feature with the new processor is in-camera red-eye removal. This feature allows you to remove red-eye after the shot is taken. The camera does a good job at finding the faces automatically, but you can manually bracket in a face if it doesn't find it automatically. It then takes just a few seconds to fix the red-eye and show you the results. You can save the corrected image over the original, or as a new image. Very nice! Sure you can do it on the computer later, but I like to option of doing it right on the camera too. I think this will be especially nice for those who might print directly from the camera.

High-ISO

A number of new cameras now feature high ISO settings. This is particularly to shooting in low-light situations, particularly at distances where the flash will not reach the subject. Again, I was impressed. I was able to capture shots during an awards ceremony where we were definitely too far away for the flash to be effective. I manually turned off the flash since it wouldn’t do any good. Taking a shot without High-ISO resulted in a photo that was both too dark, and blurry (since the shutter had to stay open so long and I was not using a tripod). With High-ISO, however, I had a much better shot, both clear and light. The only issue with High-ISO is that it does introduce more noise into the photo. But at least it lets you get shots that you’d otherwise not be able to get with a point-and-shoot camera.

Movie Mode

The A560 has a nice movie mode, taking 640 X 480 clips at 30 fps with sound. If you prefer wide-screen video, you can do that too. It also takes smaller high frame rate clips, but I can’t imagine much use for that. What I like best is that Canon is one of the few that saves to .AVI format rather than Quicktime format. I absolutely hate Quicktime video, as you can do almost nothing with it once you get it to your PC unless you buy the full version of Apple’s Quicktime and convert to other formats. Forget about using Windows Movie Maker or almost any other PC editing software to edit and put together nice collections, as most of them won’t handle Quicktime since it’s proprietary. AVI files may be larger, but that’s not much of an issue with today’s memory card sizes. If you plan on taking many movie clips with this camera, you might as well pickup an SD card of at 2GB now that they’ve dropped below the $50 mark (I got mine on sale for $30). As with most of the smaller cameras, you can’t use the optical zoom in movie mode. You can use digital zoom, but I don’t recommend that you do so to any great extent, as it just makes the video grainy.

Image Quality

Frome a few days of testing, and using the camera in both indoor and outdoor settings, I can say that I was well pleased with the quality of the shots, seeing no major differences from the ones I took with my Canon SD700 IS in the same settings. However, I did not have any prints made of the shots I took, so this is based strictly on screen-viewing on the PC. I did not find any problems with colors or sturation, and the focus and sharpenss seemed normal.