Canon PowerShot A620
This is no longer my camera, I had have it for almost a year, and I have made some 3500+ pictures so far. I didn't shoot as much I'd like to, though. Read on.
Single most annoying thing on this camera is that it is such a shameless power hog. Or, should I say warthog? It does some detection on how much power remains in a batteries during boot, but does that in such an unpredictable way, it's unbelievable for such a well-known company. It's quite common for a camera to boot, get switched into a shoot mode ( yea, that 2-position slider right under your thumb! ), and then all of a sudden, power goes off as if somebody shot down nearest power plant, camera dies right in your palm, leaving you with extended lens and no power. Most of the time it does help if you wait a little, switch to play mode, power up camera, and then power it down. When going down it'll gracefully retract its lens, repeat if it doesn't.
To keep things interesting enough, Canon does not provide any usefull info about battery status whatsoever, most you can hope for is a red battery icon blinking a few times just before camera shuts down. Oh, should I add that can happen any time, not just at boot, so it might happen that you started shooting just to check, saw no problems, gone to picnic, began to make beautifull pictures, only to find yourself high and dry.
But wait, there's more! Being such a power(full) warthog provides a plenty of opportunities to develop very
picky taste. Try to feed it with batteries charged yesterday, it'll spit them out across room. I kid you not! Okay,
a little bit. But, count batteries charged a week ago as good as dead, 3-4 days ago barely passable, which leaves you
only with freshly charged set as really usable, or, as a desparate move, you might use batteries charged yesterday. You can
slightly prolong battery life if you open battery compartment every time you put camera down, which opens electrical circuit,
thus preventing camera draining batteries while idleing on a shelf. Now, you do remember when I wrote about leaving charged
batteries in a FZ4 for weeks, without battery life getting any shorter, do you?
It might help if you disregard what charger and Canon tells you ( in an "Advanced Camera User Guide" ), and keep charging batteries, i.e. keep them on-line, for quite some time after charger signals they are full. A few hours are not that uncommon, even a full day, especially a first few times after the purchase. This might help recover batteries to their full capacity, so they could last as it is advertised by Canon, that is, 500+ shots. Of course, if you shoot a few shots from time to time, like I do, nobody knows, how much batteries will last when you pick up camera next time.
Another thing is a four-way controler plus function button in the middle, all of which are flat, not hinted, and relatively small, so it's easy to hit wrong button, especially if you're trying to work, not constantly paying attention to interface.
What's worse, Canon managed to put four-way controller with three micro-switches. How, you ask? Simply, under left arrow there is a sleazy rubberized tactile type contact, with no response whatsoever, so even if you hit it, without looking at menus, you don't know if it worked. I don't know if it is a by design ( I doubt it ), or it's quality control ommision, or it's a third world market syndrom. You know how it goes, camera works, but can't be sold on a premium market, so lets sell it for a premium bucks where it can't hit us back with warranty. I didn't notice the same kind of a problem with Fuji, nor Panasonic, their devices, while not perfect, worked in all regards as expected.
All other things aren't nearly as half as annoying as problems with batteries. Firstly, plasticky battery ( oh, no, not again! ) compartment door is under regular stress, because it's designed to be closed and opened with heavy use of a force. It won't last for a long.
Also, there is mini-USB door as flimsy as rubber can get, I forfeit its use entirely. It's better to pull card out ( luckily, it's under other door which happens to be hinged, plastic, zero-force use ), put it into one of those 76965730467-in-1 USB reader, and, voila, it's much easier, safer and faster.
Now, I won't criticize viewfinder for being so small, optical tunnel-like, too narrow. It's so passe, and is, in fact, totally irelevant. Instead, I'll just say that LEDs next to viewfinder poke into the eye unfortunate photog, who was naive enough and though that provided viewfinder means that s/he can actually use it. My best advice, plug both of a LEDs with whatever you find immediately at hand, even chewing gum will do, just make sure it doesn't glue to your eye. Your eyes are much more precious. Whatever information those LEDs are trying to convey, they're misplaced and overemphasized in an epic proportions.
If you use LCD for a framing, make a habit of a half-pressing shutter release, every now and then. Why? Well, that'll keep LCD powered on, otherwise power hog of yours will shut it down in as little as 10 secs. Of course needless autofocusing will drain a batteries. Oh, I know, you could use "Instant Print/File Transfer" button ( top rightmost from the four-way rocker ). Now we revealed its true secret function, and reason it's occupaying the most important place, right next to your thumb, pretending to be something next to useless otherwise.
Call me lazy dog, I didn't put my nose in a printed manual for a second, and I just skimmed over the menus. Yes, there is an option which sets time to power off. This, however, does not excuse Canon for having an useless button in a most prominent place.
Other four buttons are rather smallish, though slightly bulged. Being bulged won't help you though, because there
is a protector ring ( slightly raised area around button, to prevent accidental activation ), which makes it quite difficult to
actually hit the button, when you really want it to. "Power On/Off" button which is used exactly twice during a photo session,
on the other hand, not only is large, but also without any protection whatsoever, meaning it could be accidentaly pressed when
camera is in its pouch. If you left camera in a record mode ( 2-position slider right under your thumb being left on a red camera
icon ), camera will immediatelly start deploying lens, but being without enough space, it'll just damage them, or jam, or both.
Moral of the story, make a habit of putting camera into a playback mode every time you put it down. That way, even if accidentaly
powered up, it won't try to protract its lens, and finish its career with a famous E18 error.
On other models Canon demonstrated that it can acctualy make a good use of an available space. Take a look at, for instance, PowerShot G6, all buttons evenly spaced, and arranged across all surfaces, even top plate, and left to the viewfinder. Now, compare that with A620, buttons crammed into back plate, to the right from LCD, with all other areas empty. I won't grow potatos there, Mr. Canon, thank you very much, even though this is a nice parcel you provided us with. And my standard rant, seems no camera designer ever heard something about ergonomy, better jet useability. Buttons, even crammed, should be arranged so photog could reach the most important photographic functions with ease, without the need to juggle with camera while trying to adjust aperture setting, for instance.
Picture quality, you ask? Let me tell you the true story. I had this baby for a couple of weeks, and already made some nice photos, one of those I put as a wallpaper on a desktop. Being such a geek I was about to upgrade my 5 years old computer, so I found some high-school geek ( of course, who else? ) having components I needed. I asked him to bring them to my place, so I can test them before I pay for a cat in a bag. Seeing wallpaper, he liked it very much and asked about it. Soon we were chatting about photography, cameras, A620. Before leaving, he asked for a glass of water, so I leaved a room, to bring it to him. We departed, and I get back to my work. Soon, I needed a camera to make some more pictures of a stuff I was selling after a sucessfull upgrade. My camera wasn't there. I so rarely sow things, I immediatelly discounted it. And then it came to me, guy stoled it, he put it in his rucksack, while I was occupied with a glass of water. After a phone call, he agreed that was a mistake, and returned camera to me. Now you know what A620 can do. Beware. Oh, you ask about a wallpaper? You'll find it in my gallery. And before you ask, you know The Answer, don't you?
Images are clean of noise at lower ISOs, and at higher ISOs noise is, while not unvisible, much less obtrusive than anything I saw so far. As they say, seeing is believing. To really appreciate such a huge improvement, by leaps and bounds, you have to see this for yourself, to compare your pictures taken with other brand camera with this Canon to really believe.
Canon seems to get right with color rendering so people, except in a severe cases of weirdness or professionalism, will like photos right from the camera more than dull natural color images as captured by sensor, which professionals so and so massage to end up looking just like those delivered by Canon, by default. And their black-and-white is quite compelling, while sepia tend all too often to end up a little too orange.
Well, actually, a little too orange is a little too much of an underestimation. It's too orange, period. If there isn't too much of a tone change, it might end up quite likeable, if not unusual. I said unusual, because sepia isn't vivid at all, so this Canon version of it being so vivid is plainly ridiculous. On the other hand, if you use up all of available dynamic range, and then some, you might end up with "sepia" going from dark orange to light orange, then light green and finally to lemon-yellow. Canon, what were you doing, digital turpentine?
Camera is speedy and responsive, but you won't notice that, because you'll get used to its speed as soon as you pick it up, and only after some time you'll wake up one day, and realized you aren't hampered by suggishness of a camera any more. Of course, it's not like a dSLR zero-time boot machine, since it has to extend its lens, but for most practical intents and purposes, it's good enough, very good indeed.
Lens are pretty good, sharp, relatively fast, with mild chromatic aberation, and only little too high barrel distortion at wide end. In short, better than competition. Just to let you know, if you plan to make almost decent looking portraits, i.e. with focused person, and a nicely blured background, well, forget it. To have this lens so insanely sharp, Canon traded in bokeh, that means it's almost as bad as Michael Jackson in his song. This also means that camera is designed for everything to be in focus, so very typical for a P&S, which after all isn't going to be very hard to do, due to a small sensor and relatively slow lens.
I found their menu system where they assigned photographic controls to a dedicated Function button, and other, less often used options, put onto Menu button, as a functional and practical as one can only wish for.
It is a very portable, even pocketable camera, and light weight. Weight introduced when loaded with batteries doesn't harm its portability, but adds more to secure handling.
Let me put it straight, this is a mean and lean photographic machine. In a certain ways, it's more as if it was put together by a bunch of a hackers, who done that for themselves. I suppose you will buy camera just to make you pictures, you don't want it to be MP3 player, nor FM radio, nor portable console, coz it'll hinder its main purpose, right? And when comparing it to other cameras, you'll, in fact, compare pictures taken by those, not specs published, right? And pictures you like the most will determine your next camera, right? Search no further, you just find such a winner. For me, in spite of all those annoyances I mentioned, even with batteries, all fades away, when I look into my gallery, and see some very nice pictures.
Read about it at Digital Photography Review, DCRP Review, Imaging-Resource and at megapixel.net, view photos at flickr.
Send a comment
This is no longer my camera, I had have it for almost a year, and I have made some 3500+ pictures so far. I didn't shoot as much I'd like to, though. Read on.
Single most annoying thing on this camera is that it is such a shameless power hog. Or, should I say warthog? It does some detection on how much power remains in a batteries during boot, but does that in such an unpredictable way, it's unbelievable for such a well-known company. It's quite common for a camera to boot, get switched into a shoot mode ( yea, that 2-position slider right under your thumb! ), and then all of a sudden, power goes off as if somebody shot down nearest power plant, camera dies right in your palm, leaving you with extended lens and no power. Most of the time it does help if you wait a little, switch to play mode, power up camera, and then power it down. When going down it'll gracefully retract its lens, repeat if it doesn't.
To keep things interesting enough, Canon does not provide any usefull info about battery status whatsoever, most you can hope for is a red battery icon blinking a few times just before camera shuts down. Oh, should I add that can happen any time, not just at boot, so it might happen that you started shooting just to check, saw no problems, gone to picnic, began to make beautifull pictures, only to find yourself high and dry.
But wait, there's more! Being such a power(full) warthog provides a plenty of opportunities to develop very
picky taste. Try to feed it with batteries charged yesterday, it'll spit them out across room. I kid you not! Okay,
a little bit. But, count batteries charged a week ago as good as dead, 3-4 days ago barely passable, which leaves you
only with freshly charged set as really usable, or, as a desparate move, you might use batteries charged yesterday. You can
slightly prolong battery life if you open battery compartment every time you put camera down, which opens electrical circuit,
thus preventing camera draining batteries while idleing on a shelf. Now, you do remember when I wrote about leaving charged
batteries in a FZ4 for weeks, without battery life getting any shorter, do you? It might help if you disregard what charger and Canon tells you ( in an "Advanced Camera User Guide" ), and keep charging batteries, i.e. keep them on-line, for quite some time after charger signals they are full. A few hours are not that uncommon, even a full day, especially a first few times after the purchase. This might help recover batteries to their full capacity, so they could last as it is advertised by Canon, that is, 500+ shots. Of course, if you shoot a few shots from time to time, like I do, nobody knows, how much batteries will last when you pick up camera next time.
Another thing is a four-way controler plus function button in the middle, all of which are flat, not hinted, and relatively small, so it's easy to hit wrong button, especially if you're trying to work, not constantly paying attention to interface.
What's worse, Canon managed to put four-way controller with three micro-switches. How, you ask? Simply, under left arrow there is a sleazy rubberized tactile type contact, with no response whatsoever, so even if you hit it, without looking at menus, you don't know if it worked. I don't know if it is a by design ( I doubt it ), or it's quality control ommision, or it's a third world market syndrom. You know how it goes, camera works, but can't be sold on a premium market, so lets sell it for a premium bucks where it can't hit us back with warranty. I didn't notice the same kind of a problem with Fuji, nor Panasonic, their devices, while not perfect, worked in all regards as expected.
All other things aren't nearly as half as annoying as problems with batteries. Firstly, plasticky battery ( oh, no, not again! ) compartment door is under regular stress, because it's designed to be closed and opened with heavy use of a force. It won't last for a long.
Also, there is mini-USB door as flimsy as rubber can get, I forfeit its use entirely. It's better to pull card out ( luckily, it's under other door which happens to be hinged, plastic, zero-force use ), put it into one of those 76965730467-in-1 USB reader, and, voila, it's much easier, safer and faster.
Now, I won't criticize viewfinder for being so small, optical tunnel-like, too narrow. It's so passe, and is, in fact, totally irelevant. Instead, I'll just say that LEDs next to viewfinder poke into the eye unfortunate photog, who was naive enough and though that provided viewfinder means that s/he can actually use it. My best advice, plug both of a LEDs with whatever you find immediately at hand, even chewing gum will do, just make sure it doesn't glue to your eye. Your eyes are much more precious. Whatever information those LEDs are trying to convey, they're misplaced and overemphasized in an epic proportions.
If you use LCD for a framing, make a habit of a half-pressing shutter release, every now and then. Why? Well, that'll keep LCD powered on, otherwise power hog of yours will shut it down in as little as 10 secs. Of course needless autofocusing will drain a batteries. Oh, I know, you could use "Instant Print/File Transfer" button ( top rightmost from the four-way rocker ). Now we revealed its true secret function, and reason it's occupaying the most important place, right next to your thumb, pretending to be something next to useless otherwise.
Call me lazy dog, I didn't put my nose in a printed manual for a second, and I just skimmed over the menus. Yes, there is an option which sets time to power off. This, however, does not excuse Canon for having an useless button in a most prominent place.
Other four buttons are rather smallish, though slightly bulged. Being bulged won't help you though, because there
is a protector ring ( slightly raised area around button, to prevent accidental activation ), which makes it quite difficult to
actually hit the button, when you really want it to. "Power On/Off" button which is used exactly twice during a photo session,
on the other hand, not only is large, but also without any protection whatsoever, meaning it could be accidentaly pressed when
camera is in its pouch. If you left camera in a record mode ( 2-position slider right under your thumb being left on a red camera
icon ), camera will immediatelly start deploying lens, but being without enough space, it'll just damage them, or jam, or both.
Moral of the story, make a habit of putting camera into a playback mode every time you put it down. That way, even if accidentaly
powered up, it won't try to protract its lens, and finish its career with a famous E18 error. On other models Canon demonstrated that it can acctualy make a good use of an available space. Take a look at, for instance, PowerShot G6, all buttons evenly spaced, and arranged across all surfaces, even top plate, and left to the viewfinder. Now, compare that with A620, buttons crammed into back plate, to the right from LCD, with all other areas empty. I won't grow potatos there, Mr. Canon, thank you very much, even though this is a nice parcel you provided us with. And my standard rant, seems no camera designer ever heard something about ergonomy, better jet useability. Buttons, even crammed, should be arranged so photog could reach the most important photographic functions with ease, without the need to juggle with camera while trying to adjust aperture setting, for instance.
Picture quality, you ask? Let me tell you the true story. I had this baby for a couple of weeks, and already made some nice photos, one of those I put as a wallpaper on a desktop. Being such a geek I was about to upgrade my 5 years old computer, so I found some high-school geek ( of course, who else? ) having components I needed. I asked him to bring them to my place, so I can test them before I pay for a cat in a bag. Seeing wallpaper, he liked it very much and asked about it. Soon we were chatting about photography, cameras, A620. Before leaving, he asked for a glass of water, so I leaved a room, to bring it to him. We departed, and I get back to my work. Soon, I needed a camera to make some more pictures of a stuff I was selling after a sucessfull upgrade. My camera wasn't there. I so rarely sow things, I immediatelly discounted it. And then it came to me, guy stoled it, he put it in his rucksack, while I was occupied with a glass of water. After a phone call, he agreed that was a mistake, and returned camera to me. Now you know what A620 can do. Beware. Oh, you ask about a wallpaper? You'll find it in my gallery. And before you ask, you know The Answer, don't you?
Images are clean of noise at lower ISOs, and at higher ISOs noise is, while not unvisible, much less obtrusive than anything I saw so far. As they say, seeing is believing. To really appreciate such a huge improvement, by leaps and bounds, you have to see this for yourself, to compare your pictures taken with other brand camera with this Canon to really believe.
Canon seems to get right with color rendering so people, except in a severe cases of weirdness or professionalism, will like photos right from the camera more than dull natural color images as captured by sensor, which professionals so and so massage to end up looking just like those delivered by Canon, by default. And their black-and-white is quite compelling, while sepia tend all too often to end up a little too orange.
Well, actually, a little too orange is a little too much of an underestimation. It's too orange, period. If there isn't too much of a tone change, it might end up quite likeable, if not unusual. I said unusual, because sepia isn't vivid at all, so this Canon version of it being so vivid is plainly ridiculous. On the other hand, if you use up all of available dynamic range, and then some, you might end up with "sepia" going from dark orange to light orange, then light green and finally to lemon-yellow. Canon, what were you doing, digital turpentine?
Camera is speedy and responsive, but you won't notice that, because you'll get used to its speed as soon as you pick it up, and only after some time you'll wake up one day, and realized you aren't hampered by suggishness of a camera any more. Of course, it's not like a dSLR zero-time boot machine, since it has to extend its lens, but for most practical intents and purposes, it's good enough, very good indeed.
Lens are pretty good, sharp, relatively fast, with mild chromatic aberation, and only little too high barrel distortion at wide end. In short, better than competition. Just to let you know, if you plan to make almost decent looking portraits, i.e. with focused person, and a nicely blured background, well, forget it. To have this lens so insanely sharp, Canon traded in bokeh, that means it's almost as bad as Michael Jackson in his song. This also means that camera is designed for everything to be in focus, so very typical for a P&S, which after all isn't going to be very hard to do, due to a small sensor and relatively slow lens.
I found their menu system where they assigned photographic controls to a dedicated Function button, and other, less often used options, put onto Menu button, as a functional and practical as one can only wish for.
It is a very portable, even pocketable camera, and light weight. Weight introduced when loaded with batteries doesn't harm its portability, but adds more to secure handling.
Let me put it straight, this is a mean and lean photographic machine. In a certain ways, it's more as if it was put together by a bunch of a hackers, who done that for themselves. I suppose you will buy camera just to make you pictures, you don't want it to be MP3 player, nor FM radio, nor portable console, coz it'll hinder its main purpose, right? And when comparing it to other cameras, you'll, in fact, compare pictures taken by those, not specs published, right? And pictures you like the most will determine your next camera, right? Search no further, you just find such a winner. For me, in spite of all those annoyances I mentioned, even with batteries, all fades away, when I look into my gallery, and see some very nice pictures.
Read about it at Digital Photography Review, DCRP Review, Imaging-Resource and at megapixel.net, view photos at flickr.
Send a comment