Canon Powershot A530 Digital Camera [5MP 4 X Optical] is equipped with an approximately 5.0 million camera effective pixel 1/2.5-inch Charge Coupled Device (CCD). Also, with DIGIC II, higher resolution and high-speed processing were achieved and the startup time and response time were shortened. This camera is equipped with the 4x optical zoom lens, which covers a 35mm film equivalent focal length ranging from 35 mm (Wide Angle) to 140 mm (Telephoto) and an f/2.6 (Wide Angle) – f/5.5 (Telephoto) aperture.The PowerShot A530 succeeds the basic shooting functions of the PowerShot A510 and has additional or more advanced functions as well except omitting Tv (Shutter-Priority AE) and Av (Aperture-Priority AE) in the shooting mode.The recording pixels now include a “Widescreen” feature that has the same aspect ratio as so-called 16:9 widescreen TVs for shooting wide images. Adding ISO [800] has resulted in a faster shutter speed even when shooting in dark environments. The Color Accent mode and Color Swap mode that transform colors when shooting have been added to the Special Scene mode. The new “My Colors” in the FUNC. menu is used to change the look and feel of the pictures when shooting. With the newly added “Standard”, “Compact”, “Color Accent” and “Color Swap” in the movie mode, it is easier to select modes to meet the purpose. In the Standard mode, digital zoom while recording movies is available.
Helpful consumer’s review
I recieved this camera as a birthday present. It’s compact, fairly light and the ‘bump’ makes it nice to hold. Its packed with features (too many to list here) but I’ll cover the main ones. It has several pre-set picture modes for different picture types, such as snow, beach, fireworks and indoor. You can use Auto mode, that works well for general snaps, but there is a manual mode if you want it.
It has a macro mode for closeups, photo-stitch for creating panorama’s and you can shoot basic movies as well. The 4x zoom is good but doesn’t seem to go that far. However you can bump it up to 16x if you use the digital zoom as well. Another neat feature is ‘Focus Lock’. You press the shutter button down halfway, and the camera optimizes the shot for you. You then press down fully to take the picture.
The image playback function allows you to zoom in on pic’s you’ve taken and you can also see an index of all the images on the memory card which is handy. The camera uses SD or MMC memory cards up to 2GB in size (comes with 16mb mmc). As well as choosing what size pictures to have (includes widescreen option), you can also decide how much compression to use (normal/fine/superfine).
Tv output works fine and is not ‘blocky’. The supplied photo software is very easy to use and is packed with features, I was very impressed with it. My only minor complaint is with the rubber cover over the outputs, it kind of gets in the way when your plugging things in and I keep thinking it’s going to snap off. I also recommend you get some NI-MH batteries for it as well.
So overall I think this is an excellent camera that anyone would be happy with. It has great features, is easy to use and the image quality is brilliant!
Here’s a sample, taken with auto mode at the highest quality: http://img73.imageshack.us/img73/2087/img0015fh2.jpg
