Hit me with your best (Power)Shot

I once felt compelled to haul around a massive SLR camera and all its associated paraphernalia. As my interest and investment in camera gear grew, my outings gradually became less about seeing stuff and doing things and became more and more about constantly swapping lenses, fretting about filters, and all the time worrying about f-stops and other such photographic minutiae. I teetered precariously on the brink of photographic nerd-dom.

Fortunately, before I tumbled into that abyss, I recognized that my photographic talents were (to be charitable) limited. So I sold off all my expensive equipment, opting instead for the Zen-like simplicity and immediacy of snapshots. Until recently, the sum total of my camera equipment was an old Hewlett-Packard digital camera I received as a bonus from work about 10 years ago. I occasionally remember to bring it along on trips - mostly, however, I rely on cheap disposable cameras that I pick up whenever the photographic urge strikes.

With that introduction, I hope I've sufficiently established my credentials as a complete neophyte when it comes to the current generation of digital cameras. Let me be blunt: what I don't know about digital cameras would fill a large book, and I'm perfectly okay with that.

However, as I planned a recent work trip to China, I decided that my destination was sufficiently photo-worthy that I really needed to bring along something more reliable than my ancient digital camera and more sophisticated than a disposable. I returned from two weeks in China with over a thousand photos and a profound gratitude that I brought along my recently-purchased Canon PowerShot A530.

Shopping for a new camera is rather intimidating - there are literally hundreds of models to choose from, and I wasn't even sure what features I wanted. What I knew, however, was that any camera I chose would need to offer:

- Simplicty of use. One of the numerous insults of middle age is my growing inability to easily see tiny little dials, buttons, and icons. Another aspect of middle age is crankiness, and I find myself sort of annoyed with the plethora of unneeded features offered with most electronic gadgets. I wanted a camera that offered reasonable features along with intuitive controls.

- Good power management. Some digital cameras seem to devour batteries. Others require the use of special rechargeable batteries only. I wanted a camera that could take a bunch of photos without running out of juice, and one that could, in a pinch, get by with standard off the shelf batteries.

- Good optics. I was willing to trade off many of those annoying bells and/or whistles for better image quality.

- A price under $200. I was not going to slip back into my old expensive ways.

I did a fair amount of research on various websites, including here on Epinions, as well as on Amazon.com and other consumer-oriented sites. Most technical camera reviews are too, well... technical to be of much value to me, but I did appreciate the wealth of information I found at http://www.dpreview.com/ and at http://www.imaging-resource.com/. Both are comprehensive sites which offer objective reviews (from professionals and consumers) and the ability to sort, filter, and compare cameras based on any number of user-supplied criteria.

After a few hours of searching, I was fairly certain that the Canon PowerShot A530 was the one for me. The PowerShot line has been around for several years, consistently gathering high marks for price and performance. A few more clicks convinced me that Amazon.com had the best price ($159.96 at the time, and currently about $145) and delivery options (5 days, free) for me, so I plugged in my credit card number and ordered the thing.

I received the camera a few days before my departure date, so I had time to review with some leisure the user guide and owner's manual. Both are well-written and helpful and confirmed that the successful operation of the A530 doesn't require the skills of a rocket scientist. For the most part, it does what cameras are supposed to do with a minimum of fuss.

As I noted above, after hauling the thing to China and back (twice now), I'm very well satisfied that this camera was just what I'd hoped for. The only upgrade I made to the camera was to install a SanDisk 1 Gig memory card to replace the laughably insufficient 16 Mb card that comes with the camera. Now my camera memory can accommodate up to about three hundred full-resolution photos.

A summary of my experiences:

The good:
- Rugged and reliable. The camera comes with a soft padded nylon case and wrist strap, but despite these, mine took a few licks as I attempted photos in crowded trains, rainy street corners, and so forth. The camera's construction is sturdy enough to withstand these inevitable bumps.

- Miserly battery consumption. I discovered that I prefer the old-fashioned method of squinting through the viewfinder rather than relying on the camera's LCD screen. A happy result of my preference is that the camera's batteries (2 standard AAs) last almost forever. I took over a thousand photos and the batteries were still going strong.

- Good "Auto" functionality. Unlike the old days, I did not want to spend a bunch of time adjusting aperture, shutter speed, and so forth. I wanted to point and shoot and get decent photos. After a bit of trial and error, I managed to get acceptable quality pics from the full "Auto" setting. Other settings, such as "Portrait" and "Landscape" primarily adjust the automatic depth of field settings - they seem to work as advertised but frankly, I've ended up taking 90% of my shot on full "Auto".

- Overall ease of use. After a quick perusal of the instruction manual, I've managed to find every feature I need via a combination of common sense and the camera's on-screen prompts. Too many electronic devices are burdened with unnecessary features and unintuitive controls, and I appreciate the Canon's relatively straightforward user interface.

- Overall speed of operation. The camera starts up quickly and focuses quickly. The flash recycles fairly quickly, too. I've been able to capture a few spur-of-the-moment photos thanks to the camera's ability to get out of the blocks quickly.

The not-so-great.
- Telephoto quality. The A530 combines a 4x optical zoom with a 10x digital zoom. I've been unsatisfied with the telephoto shots I've taken: they're surprisingly grainy, particularly in comparison to the rich clarity of standard shots. The good news is that the 5 megapixel photo detail is sufficiently high that I can crop standard photos and still have acceptable photo quality - a sort of after the fact zoom.

That's really my only gripe about the camera.

The unknown:
This camera has features I haven't even tried.

- Video mode. I guess I can take a movie (with sound) of up to 3 minutes duration. If I ever come up with a reason to do so, I'll let you know.

- All sorts of photo modes, including snow, beach, night, fireworks (?), various color enhancements, and stitching - a feature that locks camera settings to better support sequential panorama shots.

Conclusion:
I'd rate this camera excellent in terms of features, ease of use, and durability. Because photo quality varies so much between standard (excellent) and telephoto (poor), I'm inclined to compromise on a rating of adequate. If you plan to take a lot of zoom shots, I'd look for another camera, but if most of your shots will be standard or wide-angle images, I think this camera is totally fine.

All in all, I think the Canon PowerShot A530 is a good choice for casual amateur digital photographers.