Canon PowerShot A20

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Swifty would be a great nickname for Canon's 2.1-megapixel PowerShot A20. It's a nearly perfect point-and-shoot digicam for film photographers who want to make an easy transition from analog to digital. And, just like traditional film cameras, it's darn fast! However, all the speed in the world can't make up for what the A20 lacks in image quality.

Speed Fiend
We kept clickin', and it kept on tickin'. Press On, and three seconds later, you'll be ready to shoot at a machine-gun rate of one shot per second. Flash recycling on the A20 is rapid, too, adding just a few seconds more between photos. Playback on the camera is similarly speedy and impressive--images pop up just as fast as you can press the Forward and Back buttons.

The A20 is a solid, well-balanced camera with only seven simple buttons to contend with, but its menu layout, on the other hand, takes some getting used to. Function icons and their descriptions overlay an image rather than appearing on a separate screen. Selecting among them is easy, but finding the one you're looking for can be a bit confusing. Record mode, for example, has its icons at the top of the monitor with descriptions in the center, whereas in Playback mode, the icons are at the bottom, and the text is up top. This makes for a somewhat confusing experience.

There's no status LCD on the A20, but it's easy to check your current settings by pressing the Display button, which brings up this information on the camera's small but bright, 1.5-inch LCD monitor. Thankfully, since the A20 is less power-hungry than cameras with larger monitors, there's reduced drain on the camera's four AA batteries, so a set of nickel-metal-hydride rechargeables will go a long way. Images can be rapidly transferred via USB from the camera to a computer.

Picture-wise, the A20 produces images that are slightly on the soft side, but a mouse click on Sharpen in any imaging program quickly prepares them for printouts suitable to up to 8x10 inches. CNET found that the A20's photos had good dynamic range and revealed decent shadow detail without overexposing the highlights. But overall, the images were less than what we had expected.

Nice Perks
The A20 has a 3X optical zoom range of 35mm to 105mm (35mm camera equivalent), which can be digitally extended to 7.5X, though you'll lose some resolution in the process. Its shutter speeds of 1 second to 1/1,500 second and its lens apertures from f-2.8 to f-8 enable this camera to capture fleeting action shots and low-light scenes--or even a combination of both. One nice touch is an automatic noise-reduction feature, which kicks in at 1/6 second or slower to reduce the digital artifacts that can occur in dismal lighting conditions.

Of course, there's always a flash if you need it--there are five modes, including a slow-synchro mode, which brings out details in otherwise inky-black backgrounds. In situations where a camera's autofocus might have trouble, an infrared beam extended from the camera provides extra assurance that your photos will be in focus. Other features include two-stop exposure compensation, panorama picture stitching, a 2.5-frame-per-second burst mode, threads for an auxiliary lens adapter, slide-show capabilities, and the ability to print directly from the A20 to Canon's CP-10 miniprinter. There's even optional underwater housing available.

The A20 is a good choice if you're looking for a digicam that's simple to operate and has just enough manual control to tweak shots with little technical hassle. The instruction manual is well written, but the A20's image quality is the true obstacle to it being a great buy. However, if simple snaps and easy operation are important to you, the Canon A20 will certainly suffice.