Canon Powershot A50 Zoom

I have been using my A50 for over a year now, including mtn biking, hiking, x-c skiing, and a trip to Europe. It has been as rugged and dependable as I had hoped. I am very happy with the picture quality, within its limitations of pixel count. Very easy to use, and I have used most of its features and options. At this pixel count,and 30-70mm zoom equiv, it is definitely a "snap shot" camera, but at max jpeg resolution you can make fairly decent size photo prints. Color quality is excellent. It has normal digital camera problem with high contrast situations, which I often tweak on the computer. I wish it had a USB port, longer Zoom, stronger flash. Since most pics I take end up as e-mail or web postings, the "outdated" pixel count is not usually a major issue. Worst problem is no tactile feedback on the buried shutter button, which throws off everyone that uses this camera and often results in jerking the camera. The roller wheel to turn on the camera is nice with winter gloves, but was overall a bad idea, as it is extremely easy to turn on the camera as you put it away in a case or pocket making the lens open and battery run down. Combine this camera with a pocket tripod and you have an awesome portable rig. Add the mandatory overpriced $100 recharger/AC adapter, spare rechargable battery, and a bunch of extra memory (I now have 8mb, 16mb and 48mb) and you are good for a couple week trip to europe, only needing a plug adapter, allowing nightly editing to delete bad shots. Hardly any luggage space! Even if I bought my current "dream" Nikon990, I would hang onto this for its compactness and ruggedness.

Rugged. Simple to use. Excellent optics. Uses CompactFlash. VERY portable.

No tactile shutter release feedback. Pricey extra rechargeable battery and charger kit is REQUIRED. Non-standard battery(uses camcorder battery). Turns on when shoving into pocket or case. Serial, not USB. Really weak flash.

Film cameras of various levels.

None needed

This camera is the greatest thing I have ever owned. I am delighted with the quality of the pictures which surpasses anything I've seen from cameras at higher prices.

It is compact and gives me high quality pictures that I can enlarge with unbelievable sharpness.

Haven't found any!

I bought this camera aboat 2 months ago, and I have already took more pictures with it than ever before with film cameras. I have stored most of my pictures to a CD-RW dics, and only made few test prints to paper. The first one was printed to normal paper using HP 610 printer. Image quality was quite poor. Next print was printed to high quality photo paper, and it wasa bit better. Last home print was made to photo paper, and the image was scaled to fit A4 page. 1.3Mpix just isn´t enouhg for that. Last week I sent 4 files to one local photo store via Email. They used "Sublimation printer" now, I don´t know how that printer works, but the result was great. Colors were rich and there was no way telling if it was digital printout or a conventional film. If you want to shoot pictures ant get them printed, camera´s resolution is good enough for 9cm*13cm paper size, but not much more.

- nice looking little camera with zoom - can store up to 23 (packed) images on one 8Mb CF-card. - I received a NiMh- battery and a charger with my camera. There´s just now other way to film. Lithium batteryes are way too expensive...

- Power switch is placed so, that the camera can turn on by accident. - Data transmission rate via RS232 is very poor. If you wan´t to shoot a lot of pictures, buy a USB- based CF-reader. - Zoom buttons are a bit difficult to handle with big hands (such as mine) - Turns on qoite slowly, and time spent from pressing the shuter release and image capture is way too long.

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Haven´t needed any yet.

For anyone wanting an easy, high quality digital camera- this is it! For the money and size-it does an incredible job! Excellent indoor flash results, easy and compact.

-incredible built in polarization give true colors even in bright midday beach scenes -point and shoot is nice feature. -it fits in your pocket! -does a great job of reproducing absolutely true colors -great wide angle- equivalent of 27 - 70 mm (35mm equiv)

-for some reason doesn't photo red and orange colors well -should have a positive OFF/ON lock- tends to move too easy

None

Overall, I've been very impressed with this camera. I was originally planning on only using highest resolution setting with this camera but was so impressed at the quality of its "small" size lower-resolution pictures, I found myself mainly using that setting. For 1.3 megapixels, the sharpness is very impressive. The color hues and saturation is, overall, very nice. I've had some trouble with very deep blues and purples, though. Those sometimes turn up pink or light blue instead. Battery life was not very great so I ordered the optional rechargable battery kit which has made using this camera a real joy since I don't have to worry about not using the LCD or leaving the camera on for a few minutes for fear of quickly draining an $11 lithium battery.

-Small size -Wonderful picture quality -Tough metal casing -Very crisp LCD screen -Great pictures even in low light with very little "artifacts" in the picture

-Pretty much point-and-shoot. Very little choices for manually adjusting settings -Doesn't come with the rechargable battery -A couple colors do not show up correctly -The autofocus takes a couple seconds which can be too long to wait for an action shot -The redeye reduction flash can make some people blink for the photo

None

Haven't had to deal with customer service, yet.