Canon PowerShot A620
Review Date: January 11th 2006
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Features
The Canon PowerShot A620 has a 7.4 megapixel, 1/1.8 inch CCD that delivers 7.1 effective megapixels. There are 3 image quality size settings available (Superfine, Fine and Normal) and 5 image size settings ((L)3072 x 2304, (M1)2592 x 1944, (M2)2048 x 1536, (M3)1600 x 1200, (S)640 x 480), which are recorded as JPEGs. There are no RAW or TIFF formats. The camera's 4x optical zoom lens is equivalent to a 35-140mm lens on a 35mm format camera. There is also a 4x digital zoom should you feel the need to use it. The camera is supplied with a 32Mb Secure Digital (SD) Card and also supports MultiMediaCard (MMC) memory cards. The Canon PowerShot A620 is available in silver.
The Canon PowerShot A620 offers Auto, Program, Shutter-priority, Aperture-priority and Manual exposure modes plus 11 different scene modes (Portrait, Landscape, Night Scene, Night Snapshot, Kids & Pets, Indoor, Foliage, Snow, Beach, Fireworks, Underwater). The maximum aperture is f2.8 (wide) – f4.1 (tele), and the shutter speed range is 15 secs. – 1/2500 sec. There are 4 ISO speeds ranging from 50 to 400 and an Auto option. There are 6 different White Balance presets to choose from (Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H and Underwater), plus Auto and Custom settings. The camera offers exposure compensation in ± 2 in 1/3 EV stops. The Canon PowerShot A620 offers 3 different auto-exposure metering options - Evaluative, Centre-weighted average and Spot (centre or linked to focusing frame).
The Canon PowerShot A620 has a normal shooting mode, Self-timer (2 secs., 10 secs. or Custom) and a Continuous mode, which allows you take up to 1.9 frames/sec until the memory card is full. There are a number of different photo effects on offer - Vivid, Neutral, Low Sharpening, Sepia, Black & White, and My Colors (with 9 settings). The Super Macro setting allows you to focus on subjects that are as close as 1cm. The camera offers 2 auto-focusing systems - 9-point AiAF and 1-point AF (any position is available or fixed centre) with manual selection of the auto-focus point using FlexiZone AF/AE. You can also one of the 3 focus modes - Normal, Macro and Manual. The built-in flash offers 5 different modes (Auto, On, Auto Red-eye Reduction, Slow Synchro, Off). The flash range is 45cm-4.2m (W) / 3.0m (T). An AF assist beam, AF lock and Flash Exposure Compensation are also available. Noise reduction is automatically applied to exposures greater than 1.3 seconds.
To compose your images, you can use the twistable LCD monitor or the optical viewfinder. The Canon PowerShot A620 has a 2 inch colour TFT LCD monitor which has 115,000 pixels and which offers 100% scene coverage. The Canon PowerShot A620 can record movies with sound at (L)640 x 480 or (M)320 x 240, both at 30 or 15fps. Video is recorded in the AVI Motion JPEG format. The length of the video is only limited by the size of the memory card that you are using. You can also attach a 60 second or less sound clip to an image. A histogram is available in playback mode. The Canon PowerShot A620 supports the DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) and PictBridge printing standards, and it connects to a computer via USB 2.0.
The Canon PowerShot A620's dimensions are 104.8 (W) x 49.1 (D) x 66 (H) mm, and it weighs 235g without the battery and storage card fitted. The camera is powered by 4x Size-AA Alkaline or NiMH Batteries which allows you to take up to 350 shots before needing to be recharged. There is a plastic tripod mount in the center of the bottom of the camera.
Finally, the standard box kit contains a rechargeable 4 AA-type Alkaline Batteries, AV Cable, USB Cable, Wrist Strap, 32Mb SD Memory Card and a CD-ROM containing Canon software (ZoomBrowser EX (PhotoRecord), ImageBrowser, PhotoStitch, RemoteCapture, TWAIN Driver, ArcSoft PhotoStudio). Note that you can only store 9 images at the highest quality setting on the supplied 32Mb memory card. You will therefore need to invest in some more memory cards to store your images on.
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