Review —Powershot A570 IS

In the market for another compact digital camera, I spent hours reading reviews, scanning image tests and user opinions, mostly on Digital Photography Review. After using a Sony Cybershot and a Casio Exilim, I was leaning toward something a bit more advanced like the the Canon A710. I looked at the SD series for size (small is nice for college) but finally decided to go for the newer A570 IS. The feature list was impressive for the price tag. After several days of use I can say it is one awesome camera. It has a slew of features, plenty for somebody wanting some pro functionality in a smaller body. Manual with shutter and aperture control, the Digic III processor with face detection, and excellent macro mode really sold me.

Picture quality is very good—not SLR, of course. ISO 400 will begin to show some noise when zoomed in, ISO 800 is very grainy and ISO 1600 nears "blizzard-like". Lower ISO with slower shutter can produce some more pleasing (though not as crisp) results. Colors are true and rich, and outdoor photography can be especially amazing with a good eye and little tweaking. Video quality is excellent, though file sizes can quickly get huge (about two MB a second on Standard setting). Only negative for some is the screen may be a bit hard to see in bright light—not a big deal to me. Battery life (I'm using Energizer NiMH) is good.

8.7/10 — highly recommended.

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After a little trial period with WordPress I decided to come back to Blogger so I could get my fingers back in the code. Reverting to "classic template" really simplifies things and gets the code way closer to standards compliance, but still not there perfectly. Good enough. The artist must have freedom to design.