Canon PowerShot A560 Digital Camera

Last year before Christmas we bought a Canon A560 Digital camera, this year a few days before Christmas we had to get a new Digital camera.

Canon A560 Digital Camera

We bought the Canon A560 Digital camera for a few different reasons. One was its ease of use, one for it reasonable price, and one for its size.

We purchased our Canon A560 at our local Circuit City store for just under $150.00, we were a little weary because the price was so low, but we have owned more expensive cameras that didn't last very long so we were not ready to put out a lot of good money for something that would only last a year or two. We figured if we spent less we wouldn't be out as much if the camera died after a short time, we might not get super excellent picture quality or extra features but the features the camera has are sufficient for our needs. In the end we were right not to spend a lot of money.

The Canon A560 is a camera that fits nicely in your palm, it is not a super tiny camera, but it is small enough to tuck in to a purse, a good sized pocket or a fanny pack.

The Canon A560 is a basic camera. The cameral was supposed to have a short shutter lag, and at first the shutter did come opened very quickly but as the battery started to wear down the shutter lag got slower, that is of course pretty normal, however after the first batteries was replaced the quickness of the shutter never returned to its former speed. But it was not too bad, at least for a while. This brings me to the battery the battery seemed to go dead fairly quickly. You are supposed to be able to take about 140 pictures before the battery runs out of energy, but it was probably actually more like 90. It seemed like we were having to recharge all of the time. We took it on a weeks vacation to all of the Disney Parks, and my husband had to replace the batteries at least every other day. Luckily the camera only requires 2 AA batteries.

As for the camera's features it has 7.1 Megapixel CCD for photo-quality 15 x 20-inch prints, 4x Optical Zoom Lens, DIGIC III Image Processor with Face Detection Technology and Red-eye Correction, high resolution 2.5-inch LCD, 14 Shooting Modes, including 6 Special Scene Modes. The cameral also has 4 different movie modes.

The camera has a SD or MMC memory card you can also get an optional 1GB or higher which is recommended. Why they couldn't provide that in the first place is beyond me, but I guess it is a way to make more money off of the consumer.

The camera is great for zooming you can take fairly clear pictures and movies from a good distance away. We were way back far away at a performance my son was in at school and we were able to take nice clear pictures of him from back where we were.

The software is very easy to use. It very easy to shoot high resolution images you can enlarge, crop and print. You can also make nice large prints. This feature of the camera is very nice.

The 2.5 inch LCD screen is perfect enough to see to take nice pictures. The camera also has 14 different shooting modes. You can decide weather you want to pop the subject of the photo or if you would like to shoot the entire background. You can also shoot pictures at night, and you can shoot faster pictures for a quick focus for taking pictures of kids or pets who won't stand still for very long.

I would like to tell you how many pictures the camera stores at once but that amount seems to actually change slightly depending on how many movies you take. So I actually don't really know. We seemed to have just enough room on our camera's memory card to take a full days worth of pictures at Disney World, but got very close to the maximum a lot. My husband emptied out the pictures on to the computer every night to make sure we had plenty of space for the next day.

Our Experience and Final Thoughts

I am not a technical type person at all. When it comes to camera's I like them to be as easy to use as possible. The Canon A560 was wonderfully easy to use. I was able to figure out how to use it very quickly. I was making videos and zooming in for good clear far away shots before I knew it.

The software was also extremely easy and even has a few extra features that allow you to do different things with the photos. My husband got in to that more than I did.

The pictures probably won't the crispest most perfect photos ever taken but they were certainly adequate and you could definitely see all of the details. It also took excellent far away pictures and the subject of the picture came out nice and clear as if you were closer. The video part also worked really well, we could see the images clearly, and we could hear things fine as well.

The camera required 2 AA batteries which was nice. We did not have to go out and buy anything special. Unfortunately the camera seemed to suck the life out of the batteries very quickly. So it seemed like we were always replacing batteries, this was a bit annoying. It also seemed to me that after the first battery replacing the shutter didn't open as quickly as it did originally, could just be my imagination, but my husband agreed. This was not that big of a deal.

We had a good time with our camera and used it a lot. Unfortunately right after the 1 year mark (right after the warranty expired), the shutter started to freeze up. It got slower and slower, and eventually stopped opening at all. I suppose we could have had the camera fixed, but for about $50.00 more we could just get a new camera which is what we did. So this was a nice little easy to use camera for the average person until it basically got wore out and died. So this camera only had a life of one year. This is certainly not good, but I have had more expensive cameras die at the one year mark as well. In fact it seems like digital camera's as a whole have a very low life expectancy.

I'm glad we only paid around $150.00 for the camera since it didn't last that long. In fact it worked as long as I thought it would. I think it is a shame that we have such low quality standards for our electronics these days.