Canon PowerShot A560 Digital Camera

Ever since my dad got a very fancy digital camera four years ago, I had found myself using my own film camera less and less. It's a perfectly nice camera, but on most occasions when I wanted to take a picture, I could just use Dad's camera instead, and I wouldn't have to pay to have the picture developed, or wait until I'd taken the right number, or worry about running out of film. Besides, photos taken with his camera usually came out better. It was clear I was being seduced by the Digital Side. In February, I succumbed completely when I received the Canon PowerShot A560 for my birthday.

Now, I don't claim to be a camera expert, so unlike my dad, who knows all the ins and outs of his camera, I tend to stick with a few basic functions. For instance, there's a wheel at the top of the camera with several different settings for a variety of picture-taking situations. There's Auto, Manual and Standard. Then there's the pretty self-explanatory Night Scene, Indoor, Kids and Pets (probably the most common type of picture for me), Night Snapshot, Landscape and Portrait. I've experimented with these a bit, but generally I prefer to just use Auto; if I see a scene demanding to be photographed, I don't want to miss it because I'm fiddling with my camera. There's also a flash button on the lower back part of the camera, which I use fairly often.

I've taken hundreds of pictures with this camera by now. Some of them have been duds, but you'll get that with any camera, and I don't feel so bad since I'm not paying by the print anymore. I've taken many terrific photos in a variety of settings: home, the beach, Gettysburg, the National Aviary, the Erie Zoo... I have fifteen different folders full of picture files, some encompassing several different days.

I especially love snapping pictures of animals, and I've gotten some I've been very happy with, including the goofy close-up of my dog Mokey that currently serves as my Epinions profile picture. I've had equal luck with cats, birds, bears, giraffes, orangutans and quite a few other creatures. My parents have often obliged me, too, snapping my picture whenever we go somewhere so I can add some zest to my Myspace or Facebook page. I have quite a collection of pictures they've taken of me with my camera now, not to mention all of the relatives I've photographed during visits.

The camera comes with a memory card that only holds about five pictures, so we got a 1GB memory card that I believe holds over 200 photos; I've never had to test that limit. Uploading them onto my computer couldn't be easier. I just stick the card into the slot on my laptop, and usually my pictures are copied within a couple of minutes. There's also an option to delete the pictures from the card once they've copied; I either do that or just manually delete them myself once I'm satisfied that everything is in order. Of course, pictures can be deleted from the camera itself as well; if you go into the viewing option and press the bottom button, you'll be asked whether or not you want to erase the image. I sometimes do this when I've taken an especially lousy photo, but usually I just wait until I upload them. It's hard to tell exactly what you've got when looking at the small screen on the back of the camera, and I wouldn't want to accidentally trash something worth keeping.

The camera has a 4x optical zoom; you can actually go up to 16x, just in terms of blowing up the picture, but the photos have a tendency to become grainy if you zoom in much above 4. However, I do have 16x pictures that actually turned out decently. It just depends on the circumstances. It runs on two AA batteries, which I think I've had to replace four times now. I discovered that they need to be alkaline batteries; I bought regularly AAs at one point, and they only lasted a few minutes.

Just recently, I was tromping around in the creek and my camera took a tumble. The lens, which was out at the time, got a bit banged up, and some water got into it as well. I couldn't close the lens or take a picture, and I worried that my camera was shot. However, after a couple of days, not only was I able to close my camera, once I opened it I could take a perfectly good picture. It's not back to perfect condition; the lens makes some odd noises when I turn the camera on and off, and I often have to fiddle with it manually before I can get it to focus. Additionally, the image on the viewing screen on the back is often grainier than the picture turns out to be. But my camera is entirely usable, so I'm pretty impressed that it took a lickin' like that and kept on tickin'.

This is a terrific camera for the average picture-taker. You don't need to have a lot of expertise, and you can take some fantastic photos. If you're thinking of making the switch to digital, the Canon PowerShot A560 comes highly recommended.