Canon PowerShot A10

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By Eamon Hickey
Sep 27, 2001

Canon's new 1.3-megapixel PowerShot A10 is part of a new wave of digital cameras designed to break down some old price and performance barriers. It offers a 3X zoom lens, a useful feature set, and good picture quality--all at a bargain price. Considering all these factors, we think it's one of the better digital-camera values around.

High Performance From Low Resolution
The A10's reasonable price is partly due to its modest 1.3-megapixel CCD, but don't be fooled--the camera produces high-quality pictures despite this low resolution. CNET Labs' jury found that the Canon's outdoor shots were smooth and very colorful, and they showed top-notch detail for a camera in this resolution class. The indoor shots taken with the flash were well exposed and gave generally accurate color, but there were some occasional reddish skin tones, a common problem with many budget digital cameras.

Along with its good pictures, the A10 boasts excellent handling, finish, and design. The camera is compact but feels solid and well built. The controls are well placed, and after a quick scan of the instruction manual, they're easy to figure out. The optical viewfinder is adequate, and the 1.5-inch LCD, though small, is sharp and works well even in bright outdoor light.

Feature Rich
A nice collection of features, especially for an entry-level camera, makes the A10 even more impressive. It works very well in its fully automatic mode, delivering consistently good exposures and accurate white balance over a wide range of lighting conditions. For the trickiest lighting situations, you can use the exposure compensation or the manual white balance to override the automatic settings and get the shot you want.

Another impressive feature on the A10 is the versatility of the lens. The 3X zoom lens covers a useful range--from 35mm to 105mm in 35mm-film-equivalent terms--and has decent macro capabilities. Unlike most entry-level digital cameras, the A10 will also accept screw-on supplemental lenses, such as Canon's .7X wide-angle converter. There's even a cool Stitch Assist mode, which, when used in conjunction with an included program called PhotoStitch, lets you automatically combine several pictures into a single ultrawide panorama. This is easy to do, and it works surprisingly well.

In keeping with its simple, functional design concept, the A10 uses readily available CompactFlash cards (with an 8MB card included) for storing pictures and takes good, ol' garden-variety AA batteries for power. The camera ships with a fine suite of software programs, including the already mentioned PhotoStitch 3.1 and Canon's ZoomBrowser EX 2.6, a basic photo utility to help you find, transfer, and manage all your pictures.

Happily, you can now find several noteworthy entry-level zoom cameras for a reasonable price--notably, Sony's DSC-P30 and the Olympus Brio D-100--and this little Canon, with its low, S$649 price tag, ranks right up there with the best.