Great for newbie & seasoned amateur
Pros:
Auto settings allow quick point & shoot
Great quality photos
Fits in pocket
Cons:
4-AA batteries don't last long enough
Time to auto focus is average
The Bottom Line:
Great camera for beginner to enthusiast. Certainly not professional grade, but more than enough for average users (e-mail, print, web photos). Photos come out great, even under heavy zoom.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
When I bought a digital camera, I was really venturing into the unknown. Despite being a technical guy, digital photography was one area where I was a complete newcomer.
The PowerShot A630 has been absolutely wonderful, though, and its balance between powerful features and simple use had me taking really nice photos in minutes.
The Auto setting basically allows me to point & shoot at will and almost always takes stunning photos with wonderful color reproduction and richness. The advanced settings allow me to play with exposure times, aperture, focal points, and really experiment to the max of my abilities (which are still too new to be overly successful).
The 8MP photos look great when printed on standard photo stock and I've even successfully zoomed & cropped a photo for our web site to about 12X with no visible pixilation. Even web-optimized photos look great despite being reduced down to a few KB, which I’ve had issues with in the past from pictures taken by others on lower resolution cameras.
One note of caution: if you're going to play with the advanced settings, read the fine manual. I didn't and I regretted it until I finally sat down and perused the meaning of each icon & setting. There were some photos I took early on that did not come out as nice as they could have because the Auto settings couldn’t quite capture the lighting conditions I was looking for. Once I read the manual and started adjusting the manual settings, I got even more enjoyment out of my camera!
The only downside I've found from the PowerShot A630 is that the auto focus sometime takes about a second, especially in low light conditions, which may cause you to miss those spontaneous shots. Typical auto focus time is about half a second, and from what I've heard speaking to other digital camera owners, this is typical for most auto focus cameras.
