If anyone can..... (Canon Powershot A85)

Member Name: crowlord

Product:	Canon Powershot A85
Date:	26/04/07 (68 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Solid reliable stunningly well featured camera

Disadvantages: Nowadays 4mp seems small

I have been using the A85 for over a year now, I can honestly say I've had the best performance from it of any camera I have owned so far.

The unit itself is rugged and well built with the battery enclosure providing a nice gripping area for when shots are taken. The rear is taken up by the LCD screen which suffers from very little glare in bright lighting conditions. With my previous cameras I often found I reverted to the viewfinder in bright sunlight. Not so here. Also residing on the rear is a selector switch that allows you to switch between playback and photograph, buttons for display mode, printer/pc download, menu access and function select. There is also a four way curser key and a central "set" key which makes navigating the wealth of menus a breeze.

Most cameras at this level are awful to use if you don't know what you are doing. Canon have taken most of the guesswork out with an extensive level of presets accessible from the top dial. You can select settings covering Portrait, Vista, night-time, sports/motion, a multifunction environment setting and record video clips among others. You can even use a built in tool to take panoramic shots which you then stitch within the provided software. Of course you can always set the camera to Auto and let it choose itself. If you are not the best at timing your shots it can even be set to repeat fire when the shutter key is held down. Possibly an ideal way of catching that winner at school sports days?

There is a 3x optical zoom backed up by a optional 11x digital zoom controlled from a nudge wheel set around the shutter key.

Should you wish to use other lenses there is also the ability to fit these by removing the bezel cover on the front.

The camera takes Compact Flash cards and a 1Gb card will give you around 500 images at the highest quality setting. Settings can range from size based to quality based and any combination of the the two.

Should you wish to use the camera to its limits however it excels, you can manually set white balance, aperture, f-stop, shutter speed, you can even specify the type of light metering to use. This allows for some very special effects simply by using the cameras potential. There is also the standard range of preset effects going from sepia toned to negative. black and white etc, however I often get better results from image manipulation via programs like Photoshop.

When you are finished you will want to download your images. The bundled software allows you to specify how you would like this to happen. I choose to save all shots from each day in the same folder. It will name this for you to your specifications.

However the utility doesn't end there, with the software you can remotely control your camera via USB, triggering remote shutter or even a timed regular image. If you had the will power I guess you could even perform some simple time-lapse or animation with it.

Summary: Overall the A85 is a stunning camera and one that i wouldn't swap for the world.

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