Canon PowerShot A640

i think that this is a fantastic camera and i have only had it for 1 month! It has everything you need for an outdoor shot !

My wife wanted a new digital point and shoot to take pictures of our two new grandsons. She had a Canon film point and shoot. I wanted to get her the best and easiest to use camera possible. We took this camera on a recent trip. I also took my Canon Elan 35mm film camera to compare the two. When we came home I had the digital images down loaded and a slide show with sound completed in less than an hour. It took a week to get the film processed. When we compared photographs, I immediately put my Elans (both of them) on ebay and bought a 5D for myself.
The A640 is an easy to use full featured camera that really gets the job done. Spend the few extra bucks and get the best!

Easy to use
Full featured

Lacks image stabilization. For this price it should come standard

I have had other point&shoot cameras such as the panasonic lz series and was disappointed with color saturation. I then move to the A630 (very good camera as well 8 mg.pix. gave it to my father) The features on these cameras leave the others in the dust and as for quality very hard to beat in a point and shoot.
"My Colors" mode provides PowerShot users with an incredible range of creative photo effects, which can be accessed directly from the camera with no need for post-processing in a computer. Consumers can adjust a specific color within an image to modify the look and feel of their picture. Available My Color playback modes include Vivid Blue, Vivid Green, Vivid Red, lighter and darker skin tones, as well as options for creating black & white, sepia, neutral and positive film effects. Where previously, users could only enable "My Colors" while shooting, the updated My Colors mode lets users retouch captured images as well, without the need for special software applications or tools.
The other thing I really like about this camera is the Two new shooting features for the A-Series line are Safety Zoom and Digital Tele-converter. The Safety zoom function allows users to comfortably explore digital zoom without sacrificing image quality while the new Digital Tele-converter digitally emulates having a traditional tele- converter attached. This helps to eliminate pixel break up as with normal digital zoom.
Over all GREAT Camera

Thanks
Kevin
http://www.godirectcards.com

ALL of the Above.. CANON

None So far..

Canon a630,a540

N/A

Easy peasy use at first, lots of bells and whistles for when you get the hang of it. We bought this camera because friends have a similar Canon but with lower MPs. They are totally jealous.

FIRST, the flip around LCD is awesome. When you want to take pictures of yourself this is the perfect option. You have to learn to look at the lens and not the LCD before you shoot though. But, with a digital camera people are always burning off photos of themselves, and then checking to see if they got it right. This camera...just flip the LCD and away you go.

SECOND, I must kindly disagree with the previous review which said that it can be complicated at first. There is an "auto" program which will work for most situations. Once you get more savvy then you can play with the settings.

THIRD, we have ours sets to the "superfine" quality setting. Hey, you never know which picture you will want to frame right? On this setting the card that comes with the camera just won't do. We bought a 2GB card for $50 Canadian, now we're good for 400 photos of the highest quality. We bought a 1GB card just for a upcoming trip, just in case.

FOURTH, the video quality is excellent, but get the big card I just mentioned.

FIFTH, be warned though, the 10 MP pictures are huge files that take up quite a bit of space on emails and your home computer. The size on the computer won't be a big deal for most home computers, but the upload to email will be slow. But hey, they're good quality photos when they get there.

SIXTH, we love the option of for timed photos. Buy yourself a cheap tripod ($5-$20) and then you can take advantage of the timed 10 photos in 10 seconds. This is awesome for group shots, no more worrying about someone with their eyes closed. There will be at least one good one. We used this at New Years Eve, worked awesome. The LCD flip comes in handy again here.

SEVENTH, love the placement of the zoom control. It's a ring around the shot button. Pull right to zoom in, pull left to zoom out.

It's awesome, your friends will be impressed, as will you.

1. Quality, quality, quality.
2. Easy at first, gadgets for later on.
3. Flip LCD is very useful and cool.
4. Takes good enough video by most people's needs.
5. Compared to other 10 MP cameras it's cheap.
6. Wow Factor = Impress your friends

* use the wrist strap, we dropped ours with the LCD screen open, and now the screen doesn't close properly to the back of the camera. Still works, but annoying. Our fault though. It's too handy of a camera to send away to get fixed.

Great Point & Shoot Camera for normal day to day pictures (Vacations, Family visits, and other times when you do not want to drag a large SLR around). Got this camera for my wife on vacation and cannot tell the difference between my SLR and the 640 pictures. Easy to use with still enough options to allow some control. Wife's comment was "Can I have my camera back now". She found it easy to use and not over-complicated, and I found it fun to use without having to think about the camera settings. The file size allows cropping and still having the ability to print large pictures.

While the camera was not abused on vacation, it was used between four people who are not the most gentle on cameras and the camera came through with flying colors.

As a plus, there is a Canon Underwater Case available for this camera. This makes the camera a great vacation camera.

I have no problem recommending this camera.

Easy to use and well built
Enough pixels to crop and still have large pictures
Very good lens quality
Uses AA Batteries for easy replacement (if needed)

Only that the camera does not shoot in RAW format, only JPEG
You will need a large SD Card for an extended trip (not really a weakness, just the reality of a large file size) a 2Gb card will give you approx. 400 pictures.

Oly 4000 Camera

Not needed for this camera, but have had no problems with Canon Customer Service in the past (Lens and Flash repair)

I really don't wish to comment about Sears' sales staff camera knowledge.