Canon PowerShot A550 Digital Camera

Great Camera For The Average User

By Ken  Jul 21, 2007 | 14 out of 14 found this Canon PowerShot A550 review helpful

Pros: This camera makes a great first camera

Cons: A little joy pad surrounded by four buttons

This is simply a great camera to get whether you are buying a digital camera for the first time or the fifth time. Why? Because you get all the Canon quality and features for a very good price. At this price you can afford to even gift it to a teenag...er who wants to learn a little more photography as it offers a little more than just point and shoot. I've owned about 4 A series cameras in the past, along with S2/S3 series and SD series and I still recommend A series as the best value for money based on its performance. I tried this particular camera when I bought it recently for a gift. Although the size of A series cameras is bigger than SD series making them jacket-pocket cameras, the advantage is in the styling. It gives you a convenient grip on the side which helps hold the camera steady and results in less "blurry" pictures than SD. The mode selector dial on top helps you zip through selections from portrait, landscape to nightshot and special scenes. The convenience of AA batteries which are available in every corner of the world, no missing out on pictures as your battery was discharged, is a great convenience. You can buy 2NiMH batteries with a charger like I did, and never have to buy any more again. The screen is only 2 inch (up from 1.8 earlier) but it makes the camera more durable, as the design makes it more resistant to damage. And what about the features? : - It has an intelligent 9 point focusing system with auto red eye correction which means it can choose the focus pretty accurately, although it also gives you the flexibility to choose the focus through 3 modes. (Centered, Evaluative, Spot) - SD card/MMC card slot - These cards are so cheap now so get the 2GB to store a whole vacation's worth of pictures. -Pic size- You can choose from 6 sizes for the pics including a widescreen 16:9 format which can be viewed on your HDTV. -Speed Dial: This dial on top allows fast spinning between shooting modes (night, landscape, indoors, kids, portrait, movie, auto, manual, special) so you never miss a shot. For this feature alone, I'd prefer an A series over SD as I keep missing shots on SD series while trying to change modes through the menu. With this dial even a kid becomes a pro. The SCN(special scenes) mode has Fireworks, Foliage, Beach, Snow, and Night Scene. Now even amateurs can use Canon experience to get the best shot. Fireworks is particularly amazing as it produced some great 4th of July shots. This camera does not have the Photostitch mode found on some other cameras but it does have the macro mode to take close ups. -Special effects (B/W, Sepia, Vivid, Nuetral etc.) I've used sepia a lot when taking potraits giving them an 'old world' feel. Vivid has been helpful in special situations like a red kite against a blue sky to bring out the colors. You can do this in Photoshop later but how many of us actually get the time to do this, once a pic is taken it's over with for me! This camera does not have the color accent/color swap option which is available on some other Canons. -You can set white balance manually on this camera or manually adjust shutter or aperture priority. It also has an optical viewfinder which is handy for very dark/very bright situations. -You can also take videos in 3 different resolutions with this camera and edit them right on the camera. -The zoom button shows one or many images at a time in the replay mode and you can zoom into each individual image to see parts of it closely. - While replaying, the images auto-rotate to landscape or portrait mode to align with how you're holding the camera. It's a nice feature as otherwise you can't see the portrait shots properly in the landscape mode. This camera makes a great first camera, with many features, and the image quality is superb. Especially if you are shooting outdoors the images are unsurpassed by any other brand, in my opinion. So go get it, at this price it Read more Less