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Canon PowerShot A200 2MP Digital Camera

Canon PowerShot A200 2MP Digital Camera

List Price: $279.99
Your Price:
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: real nice cam for price
Review: ...I thought [this] was a good buy this is a nice peice of equipment. The only things I would like better about the cam is when you record movies. One is that it dont record sound, second you cant zoom when recodring a video, and finally third it only records for 10 seconds at a time. It does a good job for taking pics which it what a digital cam is for so it does its job the whole video idea is a bonus deal anyway. It is a geat cam for its price belive me. Has nice high quality pics.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great camera for the price, however it does have limitations
Review: Alright, let me first start off by saying that I got an awesome deal on this camera. The price is incredible for what you are getting, plus its cheap enough for a starter to get into digital photography without making a dent in the pocket book.

Let me just summarize my pros and cons for this camera:

Pros:
- awesome price (I think this is a HUGE factor)
- takes compact flash (these are typically cheaper than other types of memory)
- takes 2 AA batteries (don't need special batteries)
- 2 megapixels offers good quality photos
- USB connection (you don't need a CF reader/writer)
- lightweight
- awesome effects such as b/w, moasic, vivid, movie mode

Overall, its a great **starter** camera. However, once you get comfortable you will probably want a better camera due to the limitations I will discuss now.

Cons:
- only digital zoom (the quality of the zoom is so terrible that its not worth using, specially indoors since the flash isn't strong enough to get you a picture)
- battery door is flimsy (the battery door is very flimsy and it broke when I dropped the camera once)
- exteremely vulnerable to impact (dropped the camera a total of about 2 ft and it stopped focusing properly... be very careful NOT to drop the camera)
- automatic settings not good enough (I had to use the manual settings to get better quality pictures when indoors)
- takes a while to encode image (specially when you have the file size set smaller.. it takes between 5 - 10 seconds to encode the image. I'm thinking it compresses the image on the fly and that slows it down)

Well, thats about it honestly. One addition... invest in rechargable batteries and a charger, a pair of batteries lasts only a few hours specially when used indoors with the flash.

Like I said, its a great starter camera but you will grow past it within 6 months.

Hope this helps... please vote YES if it did I appreciate it.

Khosrof

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Make another choice...
Review: Canon makes some good digital cameras, but this isn't one of them. The main problem is that the camera takes too long to get it's autofocus in order before it takes the picture. More often than not, the picture doesn't take at all. You can't just point and shoot. The focusing takes several seconds, meanwhile the photo oppourtunity has long since vanished. Add to that the lack of optical zoom [the digital zoom is totally worthless since it lowers the quality of the final shot] and it's lack of features, and you are left with a camera which is no better than a disposable Kodak. Shop around, but don't put your pennies here.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: What monkey designed the menus? Needs nuclear power.....
Review: DO NOT BUY THIS CAMERA! The previous, lower resolution camera I had was much better. Used AA's every half hour. I love to use technology, but this was the most unuser friendly manual and menu flow I have ever seen! This reminded me of Apple's first attempt at a handheld organizer- the Newton. If you never heard of it, its because was taken off the market almost immediately. Absolutely horrible, as is this camera. Can't take (or I wasn't willing to take the hours neccessary to figure out) action shots b/c two to three second delay when press shoot button. Impossible to time that much delay if moving photo, even family group photos hard (lots of closed eyes and broken poses) Further, after about 10 shots, with screen OFF, had to change batteries. With screen on, could only take about two pictures, before batteries exhausted. Sure, you could buy charger and nicads- but for additional price, suddenly I am getting close to a 3 MP camera that may actually be usable in everyday situations. DO NOT BUY THIS CAMERA!!!!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Canon A200
Review: Great value, easy to use, not too small but manageable.
Eats regular AA's but lasts well when you use 1600 or
1800 mAmp/hr NiMH

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Works well, for the most part
Review: Hi All,

This camera has a number of nice features and takes nice photos. Many cameras in this price range don't do nearly as well in terms of low light performance, color fidelity in incandescent lighting, or macro ability, plus having all those buttons on the back of the case is actually a lot easier than having to go through a bunch of on-screen menus.

My two main misgivings about the camera are that I've gotten some aliasing of diagonal lines a few times (though they don't seem to be all that noticeable in the prints) and the focus assist beam never seems to help. I guess I can live with the latter for the most part as I've figured out what focusing range the camera defaults to when it can't lock focus, about 8ft to infinity in normal mode and 4.25* inches in macro mode(*which is about the width of the camera, 4.3"). The infinity mode also doesn't appear to have any effect from what I can tell. How have other people's experiences run with the focus assist beam, infinity mode and aliasing?

Lastly Canon's tech support hasn't been very good, I don't need someone to read out of the user guide to me, but that's as much as they seem to do. If I could get past that first level of tech support, things would probably be different.

But really, I like the camera! Oh yeah, the small size and light weight mean I can comfortably carry it in a shirt pocket. Battery life with 1700mah Nimh is fine, though I rarely use the flash or the LCD. I guess it would be nice to have an output for display on a TV and the little rubber flap that covers the ports could be more secure.

Will

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Works well, for the most part
Review: Hi All,

This camera has a number of nice features and takes nice photos. Many cameras in this price range don't do nearly as well in terms of low light performance, color fidelity in incandescent lighting, or macro ability, plus having all those buttons on the back of the case is actually a lot easier than having to go through a bunch of on-screen menus.

My two main misgivings about the camera are that I've gotten some aliasing of diagonal lines a few times (though they don't seem to be all that noticeable in the prints) and the focus assist beam never seems to help. I guess I can live with the latter for the most part as I've figured out what focusing range the camera defaults to when it can't lock focus, about 8ft to infinity in normal mode and 4.25* inches in macro mode(*which is about the width of the camera, 4.3"). The infinity mode also doesn't appear to have any effect from what I can tell. How have other people's experiences run with the focus assist beam, infinity mode and aliasing?

Lastly Canon's tech support hasn't been very good, I don't need someone to read out of the user guide to me, but that's as much as they seem to do. If I could get past that first level of tech support, things would probably be different.

But really, I like the camera! Oh yeah, the small size and light weight mean I can comfortably carry it in a shirt pocket. Battery life with 1700mah Nimh is fine, though I rarely use the flash or the LCD. I guess it would be nice to have an output for display on a TV and the little rubber flap that covers the ports could be more secure.

Will

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great little camera...
Review: I bought it as a first digital camera, checking out the terrain before making a big investment. My friends are ohing and ahing over the pictures I took in Rio with this thing (of course, you don't need a great camera to get great pictures in Rio!). It travels well, eats batteries more than I expected, is easy to use, takes a little while to warm up when first switched on, and lives up to the positive reviews I've read here and on the web...Buy a 128M memory card and rechargable batteries, and enjoy. There's a waterproof case available, something I'll buy if I can find a discount as I'm an avid SCUBA diver and snow-skier (the kind of skier who would need a waterproof case). I was disappointed with my order - Amazon listed a coupon for a reduced-price memory card but the web site wouldn't let me apply it to my order - but I'm not disappointed with the camera. Enjoy!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Total Waste Of Money!!
Review: I bought this camera right before I was due to have my baby. I thought it would be great to take pics of the little guy & be able to email them to my friends & family. I have had more problems with this camera. It was a total waste of $$!!

The picture was so difficult to take. It took so long for it to actually take the picture that 9 out of 10 times I missed the shot altogether. And, that was when it actually worked!! 8 out of 10 times I couldn't get the camera to take the picture at all. The auto focus stopped working and there is no manual focus option. I sent it back to the manufacturer because they would not refund my money. They had it for 4 weeks, sent it back saying that it was all fixed. Still didn't work. Now the display doesn't work at all and I'm completely unable to take a picture even when looking through the view finder.

It is also a battery hog.

I'm currently searching for a new digital camera that will actually be worth the money.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent Camera but...
Review: I bought this camera to take some pictures of my baby girl and I discovered that it's very very easy to use. Multilanguage menus (configurables), Excellent options such as a great zoom, Auto Focus (with Artificial Intelligence), etc.
Such as this kind of electronic equipements this camera eats batteries... with a pair of AA Alkalines you can use it by 2 1/2 or 3 hour... No more... Without using the display...!
Excellent for beginners...! I recommend you to buy the charger to this specific model... it longs the life of your batteries and can be rechargables...!


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