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Canon PowerShot  A300 3.2MP Digital Camera

Canon PowerShot A300 3.2MP Digital Camera

List Price: $299.99
Your Price:
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very Pleased with the A300
Review: I wanted a camera backed by a strong industry name. I wanted a camera that takes good quality pictures and didn't break the bank. I'm an average camera user who was looking to update to digital. The camera is very easy to you. The editing software is very easy to use. The camera downloads very quickly. The battery life in my opinion is excellent. I spent Memorial Day taking and deleting photo's of my family and saved about seventy photo's on one set of rechargables. I was amazed on the movie taking mode and viewing it on my PC. Canon innovation and reputation continues to please my needs. Their products last and last.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: You get what you pay for, but this is the best for the price
Review: Sure if you spend more you get more, but compared to other cameras in the price range you get a lot for the money (and I spent a fair amount of time looking). Just don't expect it to replace your SLR. The quality of the pictures is quite good, and while an optical zoom would be nice at 3 megapixels you can just crop the big image and get a reasonable snapshot. I may have an entry level budget but I'm not a novice photographer, and I like the manual exposure compensation, and diffetent metering and focus modes. It doesn't feel as rugged some more expensive cameras, but I don't think it's badly made either. There is some barrel distortion of straight lines at the edges of the frame, but it isn't usually noticeable and if you aren't shooting in maximum resolution you can zoom in a bit with the digital zoom. Just not too much or you lose resolution. I like the movie mode with sound, and it's nice to be able to take 640x480 movies. You can even edit them with the included software.

It eats alkaline batteries but I don't think that's a legitimate complaint. Digital cameras in general eat batteries and they all need NiMH rechargeables. Be forewarned. I like that it takes AAs, I already had some AA rechargeables for other things and it's easier/cheaper to get spares than it sometimes is to track down an obscure proprietary battery pack that doesn't fit anything else.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Canon PowerShot A300
Review: This is our first experience with a digital camera. It is a camera easy to use for the novice and has the bells and whistles the experienced or serious digital camera user demands. Super easy to connect to the computer with the USB cable supplied. We think this gives more bang for the buck than any we have looked at. Love it.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Batteries?!?
Review: My first digital camera, so I'm learning all the basics. I love it so far except for one MAJOR drawback. I have gone through SIX AA batteries so far. It goes through batteries in about 10 minutes of photography. The ones that came with it lasted about five minutes. I then bought a pack of Duracell M3 and it burned through them too. I now bought a Monster AA rechargable pack...we'll see how those work. Am I not supposed to use the LCD screen for shooting and viewing all the time? Should I just use the viewfinder for pictures and then use the LCD screen for viewing/editing later? Can anyone help me? Should I return it for another one? Is it defective? I love Amazon, gadgets and computers...but I'm baffled here.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very good pictures
Review: Picture quality is very good. Eats batteries, but you need to buy rechargeables anyway, for any digicam, so it's not a big problem in my opinion. My camera says sometimes that batteries are depleted when they are not, when I turn it off and again on it works again.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Battery Killer
Review: I purchased this camera for my mom for mother's day. We played with if for about 5 minutes before the batteries that came with the camera were dead. We changed batteries and have exchanged the camera the bateries still only last for a few shots. I would either purchase a set of rechargable batteries or try another camera.
The pictures that we have taken do turn out very well.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best Camera in the $200-$250 price range
Review: I sold digital cameras for a living. Take my word for it. This is a great camera! It is very simple to operate and it has some cool features. The camera does not have optical zoom, but I was willing to give up the optical zoom to get the 3.2MP resolution. Most 3.2MP cameras are in the $300 plus price range. I will be taking most of my photos of people and I do not need the optical zoom. No camera in the $200-$250 comes close to this camera. Even the Sony needs improvement to compete.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: More than Adequate!
Review: I won't spend a lot on a camera that I use for Ebay, Email,classroom, and web photos. The A300 is a lot better than what I need. The video mode is handy for power point presentations. Don't use the zoom and flash together if you can help it and you'll get great shots that you won't need to sharpen. For [this price range] there is no other choice. I love it!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very nice for the money
Review: If I had realized that this camera's zoom was digital-only, I might not have bought it. Other than that, it's great for the money.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not perfect, but a great value for the price.
Review: The jury is still out on this one. I purchased this with high expectations of Canon's experience and reputation for digital cameras. I grew up in a family of professional photographers so I am fussy.

PROS:
1) You can't beat the price considering this is 3.2 megapixel camera.
2) Picture quality is excellent.
3) This can take short movies, with sound. Again, excellent quality.

CONS:
1) No optical zoom. The 5.1x digital zoom is fine if that's what you want. However, there is a huge difference. If zooming is not important to you, then this is fine.
2) The button choosing between still pictures and the movie setting is a hair trigger and can be easily shifted by accident. Both my father and I inadvertently took movies when we wanted to take stills. We didn't know it until we downloaded the images.
3) Buy stock in a battery company. At least you'll get some of your money back in dividends when you become the company's best customer. Digitals consume batteries like water, but this one devours batteries like Niagara Falls. In fact, this is probably the single biggest limitation of this camera. Getting a rechargeable package is the way to go, and you'll be using it a lot. Also, be careful of battery consumption when connected to the computer -- it's a killer.
4) The instructions in the manual, and the controls on the camera itself, are very complicated. Plan to spend a lot of time reading the manual over and over again, and practicing with the camera to get the hang of things. This is far from a "take it out of the box and start taking pictures" kind of camera. The function and display controls on the camera are, in my opinion, very frustrating. If you have patience and can spend some time concentrating and practicing, you can master it.

All in all, while you may never use half of the cameras capabilities (either because you don't need them, or will never understand how to use them), you can take great pictures. The primary decision making factor here is price. Why spend $500 when you can get this camera for less than half?


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