Product Review: Cannon Power Shot A620 Digital Camera

Cannon Power Shot A620 is a good digital camera that you can use for still photos and make very short movies. It is both easy to use and has many features that will appeal to both experienced and inexperienced photographers. It is a mid-sized camera that is a good fit for most adults' hands. With the large right hand grip, one can operate the camera with just one hand. The body is made of both plastic and metal and is of good quality. The only complaint I have about the body is that the flap to the AV in/out area is made of plastic, it should be metal. If you are like me and download photos often, then you are constantly opening and closing that flap. I figure is it only a matter of time when (not if) it breaks. No need to worry about keeping up with a lens cap or taking photos of the inside of a lens cap, on the A620 lens cap cover is built in.

This camera features 7.1 mega pixels, 4x optical zoom, 20 shooting modes and a 2" LCD screen that tilts 180° from its body and then swivels 270° letting you shoot from many angles. You can easily take self-portraits thanks to this rotating LCD screen. I have one complaint about the LCD screen you can not see the screen in harsh or strong light so in the middle of the day you can't see what you are shooting. The built-in lens is the equivalent of 35-140mm lens with shutter speeds from 15 - 1/2500 sec, aperture range of F2.8 to F4.1 and you can adjust the resolutions values from 640x480 pixels to 3072x2304 pixels. The A620 has a built-in flash, microphone and speaker. It has a red eye reduction feature that doesn't completely get rid of the red eye problem.

Stitch Assist mode is to be used to make a panoramic view by stitching together overlapping images. P Program AE mode lets the camera choose both the aperture and shutter speed according to the brightness of what you are photographing. AV Priority mode allows the user to change the aperture while letting the camera automatically chooses the appropriate shutter speed. TV Shutter Priority mode lets the user select the shutter speed while the camera automatically chooses the appropriate aperture value. Manual mode lets you set both the shutter speed and the aperture. C Custom mode allows the user to save frequently used settings and modes. Portrait mode blurs the background while focusing in on your subject. Landscape mode sets the aperture to small to make image sharp front and back. Night Scene mode lets you take beautiful photos of the sunset or of the nightlife. Special Scene mode allows you choose from Kids & Pets Indoor, Foliage, Snow, Beach, Fireworks, Underwater, Night Snapshot and the camera will choose the appropriate settings. Before you get too excited about the underwater feature, know that you will need to buy special underwater camera housing from Cannon that is good up depths of 130 feet. My Colors mode has two skin tone options: lighter and darker, it also makes red, blue and green much more vivid, it lets you swap one color for another or you can accent one color while the other colors turn monochrome. In addition to still photography modes the A620 has four movie modes: Standard, Fast Frame, Compact, and My Colors.

If you are an inexperienced photographer, don't let all these features overwhelm you. There is an Auto mode that lets you get on with the business of taking your photos without having to figure out the proper aperture, shutter speed whether you are shooting at night or daytime, or figuring out which mode you need to be in to make your subject standout. The only choice you need to make is whether to zoom in or out. The A620 zooms up to approximately 16 times for both stills and movies as long as the LCD monitor is turned on. The zoom lever surrounds the shutter button. To zoom out push the lever to the left to zoom in pull the lever to the right. It is very easy to use.

Along with the camera inside the orange box you will find a 32 MB Secure Digital Memory Card, wrist strap WS-200, 4 AA alkaline batteries, AV cable AVC-DC300, Interface Cable IFC-400PCU, 137 page user guide, and CD-ROM (Digital Camera Solution Disc):
Windows software:
Cannon Utilities:
ZoomBrowser EX 5.5,
PhotoRecord 2.2,
PhotoStitch 3.1,
Camera TWAIN Diver 6.6,
Camera WIA Driver 6.4
ArcSoft PhotoStudio 5.5
Apple Quick Time
Macintosh software:
Cannon Utilities:
ImageBrowser 5.5
PhotoStitch 3.1
ArcSoft PhotoStudio 4.3.

Your photos can be viewed on the LCD screen of your camera, by computer or television. The software that comes with the A620 allows you to manipulate the photos you have taken, create panoramas and print. You can delete a photo while it is still in your camera by pressing the Single Image Erase button, which has an easily identifiable icon: blue outline of a photo being dumped into a trash can.

The Canon Power Shot A620 digital camera is a wonderful camera for both the inexperienced and experienced photographer. I found that it has quite a few good features: excellent photo quality; easy to use features for the inexperienced photographer while having many manual settings for the more experienced photographer; rotating 2" LCD to get photos from awkward angles; and easy to use zoom lever. There are only three drawbacks that I found, the flap to the AV in/out should be metal; I've noticed a tendency toward red eye; and the LCD is unreadable in middle of the day. All in all this is a good quality camera for its price range ($200-$300).