Canon Cameras

Canon PowerShot A510 Image Quality
This camera follows on from the earlier Powershot A75 model and that was a very hard act to follow. The pictures I managed to produce with the Powershot A510 are good, but not exceptional.

The outdoor shots are fine. As is normal with a three megapixel camera there is a slight loss of detail in areas that are either very dark or very light. Other than that there were no real problems with the shots.

Indoors the test in very poor light produced an extremely good result. With the benefit of an Auto Focus (AF) beam the camera is able to focus well. The flash exposes the picture properly too.

The indoor portrait is a shot that many digital cameras struggle with. The picture taken with this camera is not quite as pin sharp as I would like to see, even with the assistance of the Auto Focus beam. The Powershot A510 does manage to light the picture well though and there is minimal loss of detail in the dark area of the hair in comparison to other models.

In the colour test, although a vivid set of colours are produced I feel that there is a slight blue caste over the picture. If you view at the sample image and look closely at the monkey's banana it has a blue tinge to it.

Canon PowerShot A510 Features
For lining up shots there is a 1.8" LCD screen. This is also used to access the menu system. If you prefer there is an optical viewfinder that you can use for composing images.

When you unpack the Powershot A510 it is likely that you will want to turn the camera on and take a few pictures. To do this you can place the camera in its automatic mode and it will make all the key decisions for you relating to the exposure. All you need to do is point the camera and take your picture.

The automatic mode is supported by a wide range of pre programmed shooting modes. These help the camera to produce the best possible shot across a variety of different photo opportunities. The shooting modes available to use are Portrait, Landscape, Night Scene, Fast Shutter, Slow Shutter, Stitch Assist (for panoramic shots), Foliage, Snow, Beach, Fireworks, Underwater, Indoor, Kids & Pets and Night Snapshot.

The built in flash unit has a maximum range of 3.5m, this reduces to 2.2m when the optical zoom is fully extended. The flash modes are Automatic, Always on and Always off. Slow Sync Speed and Red-eye Reduction are also available to use. To boost the power of the built in flash unit the Powershot A510 can be connected to an external flash unit, Canon's High Power Flash.

To add variety to your shots you can take advantage of photo effects for black and white, sepia, low sharpening, vivid colour and neutral.

There is a self timer with a delay that can be set to two seconds, ten seconds or a number of seconds that you select. Sound memos of up to sixty seconds can be added to each image to help you preserve the memory of each picture. Close up photography is catered for with a macro mode that lets you get in as close as 5cms to the subject.

If you need to fire off a number of shots in quick succession there is a continuous shooting mode that lets you take up to twelve pictures at a rate of 2.3 frames per second.

Short movies can be captured as well. The maximum length of each movie is three minutes. This is for movies shot at a resolution of 320x240 or 160x120 at a rate of 15 frames per second. Higher quality movies with a resolution of 640x480 at a rate of 30 frames per second can be captured, but the maximum duration is only 30 seconds.

Indoor shots in low light are helped by the AF (Auto Focus) Assist Beam.

Canon supplies all the necessary software and cables to connect the Powershot A510 to a PictBridge compatible printer, computer and a television set.

More advanced features include fully manual exposure settings, plus aperture and shutter priority. You can also select from Evaluative, Centre-weighted average, Spot (centre) metering, exposure compensation between +/- 2 EV in 1/3 stop increments, shutter speeds between 15 - 1/2000 seconds and ISO equivalents between fifty and four hundred. There are white balance settings for Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, Custom and you can also opt to focus manually.

To increase the capacity of the camera you can buy tele and wide lens converters and a close up lens.