Canon Powershot A85 Digital Camera (Canon Powershot A85)

Member Name: noodlesandwich

Product:	Canon Powershot A85
Date:	28/09/05 (178 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use, lots of functions

Disadvantages: You might want to buy extras (see review)

I purchased this camera a couple of months ago after my trusty twenty year old Nikon snapper finally spluttered its shutter. I bought it from Argos where it cost £149.99, reduced from £229.90 and I've just done a price comparison on Kelkoo, which brought up Amazon as the cheapest supplier at £143.99. It is my first digital camera and I've been having lots of fun with it.

I was initially concerned about the amount of pages in the user guide as I prefer just playing about and getting the feel of things rather than reading through instructions,
but I needn't have worried it's not difficult to get the hang of, although I am still very much a beginner. I like the macro mode, with which I was able to take a beautifully detailed picture of a rare moth which now adorns my desktop and I'm very pleased with the stitch assist feature, with which I was able to take panoramic photos on my recent hols in Scotland. The photographs have great clarity when full screen on the computer, but I am yet to have them printed out.

There are thirteen shooting modes to get to grips with, but if you're a bit wary of new technology you can always leave it on auto mode which is basically just pressing the shutter and letting the camera do the rest, same as the old days, (for me anyway). You can also set the flash to auto so that you don't need to make any decisions in that quarter either, which is what I was inclined to do at first, but have since become a bit braver, for example; I took a picture in daytime of my cat on the window ledge, (yes I'm sad), which flashed on auto flash and came out fine, but then I took it again, (told you), with the flash switched off and preferred the naturally lit picture.

The LCD screen makes it easy to flick through your pictures and you can play back your mini movies with sound. You can look at the picture you are taking on the screen which makes for better composition, although it can be difficult to see properly in bright light, but I think that might be the case with most, if not all, digital cameras.

The first nine shooting modes are: auto, portrait, landscape, night scene, fast shutter, slow shutter, special scene mode ( this includes settings for foliage, snow, beach, fireworks, underwater and indoor ), stitch assist and movie mode. Then we move into the creative zone which consists of four modes that allow you to select settings such as shutter speed and aperture value but that is an area into which I have yet to venture.

It was very easy to download the images to my computer which I did directly from the CF card provided, but this will be different depending on the type of computer you have. The memory card that comes with the camera was a bit small for my liking so I bought a bigger one. I also splashed out on a carry case and a battery charger with NiMH batteries (nickel metal hydride). The user guide provides statistics on battery performance and the NiMH batteries are far superior to alkaline ones. The user guide is very detailed and helpful.

There is a lot more to this camera than I have covered but I felt it would be pointless to try and explain functions which I haven't used. For those who would want a lot more detail I found the following link:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/A85/A85A.HT M

More Details:
4 x Megapixel sensor.
3 x Optical zoom.
1.8in colour LCD.
13 shooting modes.
Up to 3 minute movie clips.
9 point AiAF.
PictBridge and Canon Direct Print compatible
Print/share button..
Includes 4 x AA batteries, 32Mb compact flash card and digital camera software.

Summary: I'm very happy with this camera.

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