Alan Stafford

Canon PowerShot A20

The Canon PowerShot A20 is a solidly constructed, compact digital camera with an attractive price. The battery compartment (for four AAs) creates a comfortable handhold, and you can operate the camera with one hand--one finger rests on the shutter release, and your thumb works the big zoom button on the back of the case. The 3X zoom lens retracts beneath a protective shutter (so it has no lens cap to lose). Zooming operates smoothly, precisely, and with adequate quickness. When you zoom in on a subject, the lens maxes out its optical zoom; let up, then press again to activate the digital zoom, for a total magnification (counting both optical and digital) of 7.5X. You can also attach wide-angle or telephoto converters, or a waterproof housing. The same button controls playback zoom, which allows you to examine a shot closely and scroll around different areas of the image. The LCD, though small, is bright and clear, even in sunlight, though it shimmers a bit when you play back pictures. Semi-translucent icons and text surrounding the LCD display the camera settings in a logical layout that doesn't get in the way of your shot; in playback mode, you'll see the settings the camera used for each shot (for example, the date, picture number, and quality and compression settings). The camera makes little fuss when taking shots. It focuses quickly and without moving the zoom, so it's quiet, quick, and doesn't drain the battery with a lot of unnecessary motor activation. Unlike many inexpensive digital cameras, the A20 has an auxiliary light that activates in low-light situations to aid auto-focusing. If a dark subject makes the camera choose a slow shutter speed, a small icon on the LCD warns of potential blurring (indirectly prompting you to use the flash). The flash is powerful and provides even coverage. The A20 includes an excellent manual that contains many clear illustrations and photos, an index, and even a chart showing which functions are available in each of the camera's shooting modes (and which settings the camera will retain after powering down).
The set of four AA alkaline batteries that ships with the A20 doesn't last long compared with the battery life of most other cameras. We got only 46 minutes of life out of them, for only 66 shots. A couple of sets of rechargeables would extend the camera's usability. We found the menu controls annoying. You enter the menu system by pressing a button below the LCD; two small arrow buttons to the left of the menu button let you navigate the menus, and a set button to the left of the arrow buttons chooses a setting. That's not a typical arrangement: Most cameras reverse this order, and we often pressed the menu button when we wanted to choose a setting. In addition, all of these slippery little buttons pull double duty for activating settings when the menus aren't activated (for example, one button also chooses macro mode), and the labels for the menu controls aren't nearly as prominent. The button that controls white balance settings also lets you delete pictures in shooting mode or playback mode, but it isn't labeled for the delete function at all. To delete an image, you must press that button, then press one of the arrow buttons to choose OK rather than Cancel, then press the set button. The buttons also activate too slowly: We often pressed buttons on our test camera too many times because we thought they hadn't worked. Other times we pressed a button once and it worked as though we'd done so two or three times. This camera is strictly a point-and-shoot model: It does not provide exposure controls beyond basic exposure compensation and white-balance settings, and you cannot focus manually.
You can pick from six different white-balance settings, including automatic and fluorescent-light settings. A single button controls both (the same one that deletes images). In our image quality tests, the A20 scored in the middle of the pack for most photos. In a high-resolution, 8-by-10-inch print, whites and colors looked adequately bright but not dazzling; we rated the print's sharpness as a little above average. With lower-resolution shots, both in on-screen and printed examples, orange bled into red, and greens looked a bit too hot, but for the most part we were happy with the A20's color reproduction. Unfortunately, at lower resolutions, JPEG artifacts appeared around the eyes of our test mannequin in some shots, and some other shots looked a little blurry. Still, under less challenging conditions--especially outdoors--the camera is capable of some good-looking photos. The Stitch Assist mode--which Canon builds into several of its digital cameras, including the PowerShot A20--helps you shoot panoramas by showing you a portion of your previous shot, which you can use to line up the next shot for proper overlap. However, it only allows you to overlap horizontal shots; allowing you to overlap vertical shots would give you a much better top-to-bottom angle of view. Software that ships with the camera does the stitching, and it's surprisingly forgiving of overlap errors. If you hold down the shutter in the manual mode, you can take multiple shots as fast as 2.5 images per second, up to the capacity of the memory card.
The A20 might appeal to people who want to pull a camera out of a pocket or purse and snap off a quick shot or two without needing to set lots of controls.

Buying Information

Canon PowerShot A20 2.1 megapixels, 1600 by 1200 maximum resolution, 35mm to 105mm focal range (35mm equivalent), f2.8 and f4.8 aperture range, shutter speeds from 1 second to 1/1500 second, optical and LCD viewfinders, USB and video connections, bundled 8MB CompactFlash media, four AA batteries, 12.6 ounces with batteries; Canon RemoteCapture 1.3, PhotoStitch 3.1, ZoomBrowser EX 2.6, and PhotoRecord 1.2 software. One-year parts and labor warranty, toll-free support for 11 hours on weekdays. $ 399 2.1 megapixels, 1600 by 1200 maximum resolution, 35mm to 105mm focal range (35mm equivalent), f2.8 and f4.8 aperture range, shutter speeds from 1 second to 1/1500 second, optical and LCD viewfinders, USB and video connections, bundled 8MB CompactFlash media, four AA batteries, 12.6 ounces with batteries; Canon RemoteCapture 1.3, PhotoStitch 3.1, ZoomBrowser EX 2.6, and PhotoRecord 1.2 software. One-year parts and labor warranty, toll-free support for 11 hours on weekdays. 800/652-2666 http://www.powershot.com