Excellent value, features and reliability (Canon Powershot A95)

Member Name: alan32

Product:	Canon Powershot A95
Date:	22/12/07 (72 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Endless. Easy to use but with many facilities

Disadvantages: None hardly

I will confess two things at the start: first, I am not a top photographer despite having taken thousands of photos in my time for various reasons (before buying the A95) and second, I am a total fan of the A95 camera.

Having bought it very competitively for price at £227 including a 256mb compact flash card nearly 3 years ago (much cheaper now of course), it has not once let me down in any way. I have kept the sequential picture counter going and feel that is a good indicator for reliability after the latest count of 6,034 photos and videos. It is more "chunky and robust" than "flimsy and lightweight" but, in my opinion, definitely NOT to the extent of being too heavy for leisure use.

If you look at the professional reviews for this model, for when I purchased anyway, they are all pretty complimentary with one negative only, i.e. the tendency for incorrect colour fringing of tree outlines in strong light with landscape shots. All I can say is that although I was nearly put off buying for that reeason, it has yet to happen to me!

Let me be specific now:

FIRST. If you do not want the many adjustments and prefer to "point and take" your shots, that is fine by using the AUTO setting and the preset and remembered resolution. My needs being relatively simple for images, I tend to keep it on postcard size, which supplies a very clear image on a full screen on the PC and has the benefit of including, if you want it, the date. The focusing and light are done for you and if you have a 2gb card, you can shoot 3,288 pictures. There is another setting that allows 6,941 but should you want max resolution you go right down to 780. In short, it is very easy to use if you are not an expert and there is loads of memory with a card of higher capacity.

SECOND. Although the smaller memory compact flash cards are cheaper, I think it is worth having larger ones like the 2gb sandisk ultra 2 with such a big memory. It only costs about £17 including postage and packing if you search the net. The only other item needed to make it work is the battery setup. I have been using the same 8 batteries for nearly 3 years now. Jessops did a good price at the time for rechargable AAs and a charger unit. When the 4 in the camera run down, the full ones can very easily be taken from the normal camera case with pouch and swapped. They last for at least 300 shots, so just put the old ones on to charge that night and no loss of camera use, or at least, that has been my experience. In short, the memory cards are cheap and capacious and the same goes for the batteries.

THIRD. If you want the bells and whistles, they are indeed there. A dial on top allows 14 shooting modes; there is flash and macro; pictbridge to connect direct to a printer (although I have not had cause to use this personally); 3 times zoom; plenty of menu settings; two-step shutter release, i.e. you press halfway, pause and then take the shot with the final half pressure; ability to scan through all shots in memory on the screen, either individually or in batches of 9 thumbnails at a time and this is quicker; a cable connects you to a TV and the batteries are so good that you do not have to make use of a 9 volt adaptor for power, just plug the camera into the TV and see a slide show or video clips; 2 or 10 second photo delays; red eye reduction; automatic focus assist beam etc. etc. Like most people, I suspect, I have not used all the variations much, but it is nice to know they are availabe for anything special.

FOURTH. A major benefit is the mobile back screen. In strong light, it can be hard to compose the picture from the screen when you have to hold it up to eye level. The A95 lets you look down from above at the swivelled screen so you can indeed see the proposed image, since the angle of light is then OK.

FIFTH. The video works very well in my view. You can shoot for, I find, up to 2 minutes quite easily and both sound and vision is good on the TV. Then you can load it into the PC and burn a DVD for sending round the family and so forth. Perhaps, all this is par for the course these days, but all I can say is that the quality seems fine to me. The microphone in particular picks up distant and low sounds.

SIXTH. Software was supplied and means a supremely fast load on to the PC if you can use, as I do, a card reader. Somewhat slower and more fiddly via USB port. But using the Canon ZX Browser, it takes about 10 seconds to get 50 shots on to the hard drive. Due to its use of more memory, the blue line showing progress of loading goes more slowly for video, e.g. a 2 minute viseo clip might take about 6 seconds to put on the PC: hardly a problem.

Finally, I have been trying to find something negative to say here, because let's face it, what's perfect? And I have come up with 2 points. Firstly, the printed aperture range of sizes on the front of the lens casing are wearing off with use, although I have not had cause to use them anyway, because they are only decorative without involving any adjustments. Secondly, a close shot in poor light, e.g. say 12 inches, will be done in AUTO mode with a flash and that will overexpose it. It is better to disable the flash and risk a bit of fuzziness with camera shake for the resulting longer exposure time. And that is the sum total of negatives I can tell you about.

Summary: Brilliant camera with video-clip ability

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