Canon PowerShot A480

Canon are a huge name in the world of photography and they have produced some very fine cameras, including some excellent top end DSLR`s. I have never been their biggest fan when it comes to point and shoot cameras and I almost always find something lacking in theirs when compared with the Cyber shots and Samsungs of this world so when I was handed the Canon Powershot A480 and asked to put it through its paces and give an opinion on it, I have to ...
...is around £100. So if Canon are not going for the extra megapixels or a bigger brighter LCD screen or any of the other gimmicks that seem to sell cameras these days then what exactly is their selling point, their reason why people should choose this over any other point and shoot?

Well it seems they are relying on the “Motion Detection Technology” which they say combats blur in photos, Canon have advertised this in a few ways such ... more

Canon are a huge name in the world of photography and they have produced some very fine cameras, including some excellent top end DSLR`s. I have never been their biggest fan when it comes to point and shoot cameras and I almost always find something lacking in theirs when compared with the Cyber shots and Samsungs of this world so when I was handed the Canon Powershot A480 and asked to put it through its paces and give an opinion on it, I have to admit I did not expect to be blown away by it.

Firstly I should say that aesthetically it will satisfy the needs of many as it can be bought in four colours, silver, black, blue or deep red, so that is the “my camera looks better than yours” taken care of but is it any good?

It has a ten megapixel capability, a 3.3X optical zoom and a 2.5 inch LCD screen, so it is pretty much on a par with all the other point and shoots in its price range, which incidentally is around £100. So if Canon are not going for the extra megapixels or a bigger brighter LCD screen or any of the other gimmicks that seem to sell cameras these days then what exactly is their selling point, their reason why people should choose this over any other point and shoot?

Well it seems they are relying on the “Motion Detection Technology” which they say combats blur in photos, Canon have advertised this in a few ways such as people jumping on a trampoline and taking photos of each other and people riding the waltzers at a fair and taking photos of each other and the photos appear blur free. I have not tried the trampoline or the waltzers to test this out but I can tell you that with enough movement I still got blurry photos so if this was the only selling point then I would not be buying this unit on that alone.

Being a Canon camera though there is lots of good points about this camera such as the excellent “face detection” setting, Canon have brought this down from their DSLR`s and they are one of the few companies that have got this function right in point and shoot cameras. Face detection is designed to pick out faces in the photo being taken and concentrate on them, giving them the right skin tone and keeping them in tack sharp focus. Canons face detection can detect up to 35 individual faces in one photo and unlike most point and shoots in this price range you can see a clear difference when this setting is used.

Another thing I found to be very good about this unit was the quick start up time and its ability to auto focus quickly even if the light was not great, ok it obviously cannot compete with the DSLR`s I am used to using but as far as competing with the many point and shoots I have tested recently it compares very well.

When it comes to what I call real photography (ie) (when you set up the camera yourself rather than just shooting on auto), I found the settings in this camera pretty good. I could set things like ISO settings and white balance as well as the usual apertures and shutter speeds settings which gave me a much better chance of getting the shot exactly how I wanted it rather than how the camera said it should look.

Do not fear though, if you are very much a novice and the auto mode is as far as you care to venture then be assured the auto on this unit is as good as any in the price range and even a little better than some. It seems to be very good at reading a day lit situation and giving you a good final image and it also coped well with most indoor shooting although it did underexpose any shots that I tried to take indoors without flash even though I was in a room with plenty light and both my DSLR and a cyber shot point and shoot were very capable of getting the shot right.

Moving on to the built in flash on this unit and it is very much like any other, it will cause red eye when used in a darkened room, sometimes even when the light is reasonable it still caused red eye. It will cause severe hot spots on faces or light subjects in photos and it will over expose slightly almost every time even although Canon claim their new “Safety FE” avoids blowout when the flash is used. This cannot really go against the camera because, again almost all point and shoots have the same problems when using flash, you can change settings manually to help avoid the overexposure but if you are not confident of doing so then you have to live with it.

The overexposure will probably never really be a problem to you unless you intend to try and sell your photography as stock or try to charge people for photographing them, which I guess most people looking at this type of camera will not be considering. As a pro photographer the overexposure was very evident to me but as I say, if I had not mentioned it then many an untrained eye would have been none the wiser.

As well as the automatic setting and setting the camera up manually you also have the option of using one of the 15 built in settings devised to help you shoot in certain situations, I am never a fan of these in cameras because to have a “fireworks” setting for instance is assuming that every firework will be pictured in the same light and will be of the same brightness, which obviously they never are but these settings will certainly get you a little bit closer to the right exposure than automatic will.

There are pretty much equal good and bad points when this camera is summed up and although I would not go out of my way to recommend it, I would be quite happy to point it out to someone as, as good a camera as there is in its price range. Today there are so many point and shoots out there that they are all becoming much of a muchness and it takes something really special to make one stand out when it comes to performance so it is often down to which one looks and feels the best to use.

When it comes to looks I guess this one is an ok looker but for me the Sony Cyber Shots are much more aesthetically pleasing and the Samsung cameras in this price range are usually quite stunning. The colour choice will be a good thing for many and the fact that being a Canon they feel very sturdy and good in the hand as opposed to the much lighter and more flimsy feeling Samsungs could go a long way to swinging people in favour of this unit. For me though it is always down to performance and I really do feel that in the £100 price range you can pretty much close your eyes pick one out as a lucky dip and get on with it.

THE MAIN FEATURES.

Compact, lightweight 10.0 Megapixel camera in four colour variations (silver, red, blue or black)*

Canon 3.3x optical zoom

Easy to use, with simple button layout and intuitive user interface

2.5” LCD with Image Inspection Tool for focus checking

People shots made easy with Face Detection AF/AE/FE/WB and
Red-Eye Correction in both shooting and playback

DIGIC III processing delivers high-quality images and intelligent technologies

Combats blur with Motion Detection Technology

Smooth, 30fps VGA movies with Long Play mode

15 shooting modes

Safety FE avoids blow-out when the flash is used

Powered by AA batteries.

There may be something in those features that helps you make this unit your chosen one or maybe when I tell you that it is slightly kinder to batteries than many others using AA`s, that might make your mind up but honestly my best advice to you would be go to a shop where you can feel the camera in hand and maybe even get a play about with it (Jessop’s for instance will allow this), you can still then say thanks for your time to the kind shopkeeper and go and buy it somewhere cheaper online but make sure you get a feel for it first because it really can just come down to which camera you feel more comfortable using or which is the easier to use.

A few other things to note with this camera is that, the video shooting is good on it when the light is good but rendered virtually useless as soon as the perfect light drops, the instruction manual for it is very simple to understand and if you read it thoroughly then you should be able to master most things about the camera fairly quickly. The software that it comes with is nothing to get excited about although it is easy to install and very easy to use and the connection of this unit to the PC or laptop of your choice couldn’t be simpler.

I could easily have given this unit three stars but because it is a Canon and there are no real reasons why it could not serve an amateur photographer very well I will give it a four out of five.

I have also said that I would recommend it to a friend because if this was the price a friend was looking to pay for a camea then this is as good a any.

Thanks for reading,

© thebigc1690

 

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