This camera really shines when it’s in bright light and you don’t push the lens to its limits of wide angle and wide open. Keep the zoom from 14.7mm and higher (zoomed closer in), and the aperture at 4.5 or smaller (larger f numbers), and you see real Canon quality, comparing favorably to a 35mm Canon L series lens I have for my SLR that cost nearly 10 times what the entire A650 cost. The 80, 100, and 200 ISO settings produce stunning images with little noise, good contrast, and tremendous color. The macro mode works very well. Keeping the A650 within the settings mentioned above you could use it for virtually any professional application- if you didn’t have to explain to a client why you were pulling out a ‘consumer grade’ camera. It would make a great last ditch backup camera for a pro, taking up little more room than a 100mm lens in a camera bag. I bought it as an ultra lightweight alternative to do landscape work in difficult to access locations I don’t want to haul a full 35mm kit to, and for this it functions quite well.
Another strength is that it uses AA batteries instead of a proprietary battery pack and charger. At a recent party a friend brought his Nikon Pro DSLR. He left his battery packs at home on their chargers. I know that doesn’t happen often, but if I’d forgotten my batteries I could have popped down to the nearest supermarket for more. Even using AA batteries battery life is tremendous. I’ve never taken more than 150 pictures in a day, but I had plenty of energy left, so I don’t doubt Canon’s 300 shot claim- and that’s using the LCD screen. It can be turned off and you can use the optical viewfinder to extend battery life further.

A nice feature the A650 has, that most point and shoot digital cameras don’t, is the ability to mount filters. You must buy an optional filter holder which attaches to a mount behind a removable trim ring at the base of the lens. This is important because it lets you use a polarizer or IR filter- effects that aren’t easy to achieve in software post processing, which brings us to yet another unusual feature. Most digital cameras can’t take infrared pictures. The A650 can. I haven’t tried any filter stronger than an IR72, but it definitely works.

Perhaps the nicest thing about this camera are the pro level features Canon doesn’t provide- but only because someone else has, and for free. While Canon uses its pro level 12.1 megapixel Digic III engine in the A650 they’ve crippled the software so that it only takes consumer level compressed 8 bit jpeg pictures. If you install CHDK it also takes 13 bit uncompressed RAW pictures, increasing the dynamic range exponentially. As this isn’t a review of CHDK I’ll stop here, but CHDK really makes the A650 a much better camera.

The main weakness of the A650 is that they’ve pushed the lens design a bit too much. For taking family photos or snapshots I wouldn’t hesitate to use the lens at any f stop or focal length- and since this is the market maybe I shouldn’t even point it out as a weakness, but the camera is perfectly suited for serious photographic work if you zoom in and stop down a bit. Canon makes remarkable lenses and in many situations this lens is great.

Another little niggling thing is that while it has many different program modes, they all seem to default to using the lens wide open- even the scenery mode where in theory you want maximum depth of field. It’s not really a problem as it has both a full manual and an aperture priority mode.

Like most small digital cameras the optical viewfinder isn’t quite up to snuff. I doubt it has more than 70% coverage, and while the left and right centering is pretty good, the up/down centering is weighted towards the bottom.
The final weakness is more a note about a potential user error. The flash is in the extreme corner of the camera, and if you have large hands it’s easy for a finger to partially cover it, resulting in interesting shadows. Also, if you’re using the accessory lens holder you can’t use the flash at wide angle without the holder casting a shadow.

The Canon A650IS is a midsized point and shoot digital camera with many features found only in more advanced cameras. It’s a good alternative to larger DSLRs when size/weight/price are issues. It has a 12.1 megapixel sensor behind a 7.4-44mm f2.8 image stabilized optical zoom macro lens (very long for its type, equivalent to a 35-210mm 35mm SLR). It records images with the Canon Digic III picture engine, with ISOs from 80-1600 at standard resolution (up to 4000x3000), and ISO 3200 at diminished (1600x1200) resolution. It has an optical viewfinder in addition to the 2.5” tilt/pivot LCD viewfinder. It accepts SD and SDHC data cards. I’ve read on different websites that both 4GB and 8GB are the largest card it can accept. The manual lists no such limitation. I’ve personally never used a card larger than 2GB in it, which is good for about 100 high quality pictures stored in both jpeg (Superfine quality, 4000x3000) and RAW format. (Nota Bene: The A650 does not store RAW picture format natively. You must install free aftermarket software [not a Canon product] on the SD card and boot the camera from the SD card to do this. See below).

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Similar Products Used:

Several small point and shoot cameras from Olympus, Nikon, and Fuji.

35mm SLR systems from Canon and Minolta.