Canon A80 - Good for point and shoot and more... (Canon Powershot A80)

Member Name: derek-a

Product:	Canon Powershot A80
Date:	06/08/05 (318 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use as point and shoot and professional-features if needed. High quality shots.

Disadvantages: no low-battery warning.

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 branch of Jessops. 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 – something that I was delighted with, because a friend of mine owns a Kodak digital camera and it only takes 2 batteries and they are giving up the ghost after just one or two pictures! However all is no well with the way the Canon deals with battery life…

A niggle I have discovered 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 conk out and tell you that batteries need replacing – so you have to make sure that all four batteries are fully charged.

I have found that the best batteries to use 1000aMah or higher. The ones I am using currently are Uniross rechargeable 2000mAh that I purchased from eBay along with a high-speed charger that can be used in the car or mains.

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 [4MP] 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.

The camera also has a movie facility that I have not used because I already have camcorder.

I am not really a techy person when it comes to photography and I much prefer to just be able to point and shoot and the Canon suits me down to the ground in this respect. However, there are loads of functions that I have hardly used but for the sake of this review, the camera has presets that you can switch to… Fast/slow shutter speeds, portrait/landscape modes. Low-light (nightshot) and you can capture short movies – the length depends on the size of CF card you have fitted, but already owning a camcorder, this is something I never use. There is also a macro mode that allows you to shoot close-up shots – I have used this and found it quite impressive.

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.

Another thing 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 1¼ inch 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.

The prints I have from this camera have been really outstanding, right up to A4 size (which is the biggest my printer can produce) the quality was matching if not better, than my old 35mm prints. And that is on an old Epson Stylus 880 with cartridges refilled with cheap ink bought in Tesco! We have also used the Jessops printing service for special prints with really outstanding results.

Loading pictures on to my computer is simplicity itself. I run Windows XP and all I need to do is plug in the camera with the USB cable (provided) and a window pops up asking me what I would like to do with the pictures, (print/save them to disk/view etc). There is an installation disk to install the camera drivers to other versions of Windows which my wife has installed on her machine (which runs Windows Me) with no problems.

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 [large capacity] 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 definitely opt for the Canon.

Summary: An excellent camera for beginners and pros alike

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