Canon PowerShot A300 3.2MP Digital Camera

Rating:
Summary: Sweet Camera!
Review: This was a great first camera for me and I feel like I got WAY more than I paid for. 3.2MP and high resolution allowed me to touch up in Photoshop and still allowed fantastic print quality. Video recorder has audio. There is no Optical Zoom, which is why I decided to get another camera after I felt like I've "graduated" from this one. Buy, Ni-MH rechargeable batteries. They last WAY longer and this way, you won't have to own your own battery company to like this camera.
Oh, and since Canon cameras all have digic chip processor and pretty much the same operating format, after you're done with this camera, you won't have any trouble when you upgrade to any of the fancier Canon models.

Rating:
Summary: The Jury Is Still Out
Review: I recently purchased this camera with high expections. So far the jury is still out. This is a good beginners camera, and beginners will love the picture quality vs that of 35 mm. I also love the fact of being able to print pictures directly from the camera (with the printer it comes with) without having to use a pc. The cons are this camera goes through batteries. I am thinking about buying stock in a battery company. After pressing the shutter button, the camera takes it's time to produce the image. The user's guide is wordy. I just sat down one weekend and read through the guide and practiced with the features on my camera, only to have my batteries die out twice during the process.

Rating:
Summary: Good quality, bad performance.
Review: I bougth this camera on January 2004 and I already sold it. Quality pictures was pretty good, but time between shots is really long. When you ask somebody to take a picture for you it is very very embarasing because many times the shutting button just doesn't work. I think this is not a good election to buy please check other trademarks since I have read this problem also occurs with other CANON cameras.

Rating:
Summary: OK, but that's it
Review: This camera is affordable and I should perhaps not expect any better.

To sum up. It is qutie big, but that I knew when I bought it. But on the other hand it doesn't weigh that much. The quality of the pictures are good. The camera has a few times reset its clock. Making me having to set the clock before I could take the picture. There are also some troble taking the picture. You should press the button half down and wait for the camera to focus and be ready before you press it all the way down to take the picture. Otherwise it sometimes refuses to take the picture. It also takes a looooong time to take a picture. Making you miss some spescial moments. Otherwise however it works fine. It is easily installed, and used with the PC.

Rating:
Summary: Nice Pictures, but Tragic Flaw
Review: I purchased this camera a while ago, and while I was generally pleased with the picture quality and other functionality, the camera has an intolerable flaw: the slow shutter time. It takes an eternity between the time you press and hold down the button and the time the picture actually takes. This gets pretty embarrassing and frustrating when you're asking other people to take pictures of you and your friends. I got sick of saying "You have to hold it down for a long time...even longer...there we go" I gave up in the end, and bought a different camera.

Rating:
Summary: Barely average
Review: This camera is extremely cheap. Although it is a bargain and not a bad camera, I found it too frustrating for regular use. I took the camera on an extended trip and discovered the following foibles:
1, It eats through a set of 2 AA batteries in 20 - 40 pictures, depending on how much the flash is used (using LCD screen for every shot but for minimum possible time).
2, If you close the cover before the yellow light has stopped flashing, the camera thinks the batteries are finished and needs to be re-set four times before it will behave properly. Note to Canon: why not just take pictures until there's no more juice?
3, It takes an age to take the picture. Whenever I pressed the button, it always took several seconds. Occasionally, the camera would just click and whir for 10 seconds without doing anything. I missed several great pictures because of this. If I asked anyone else to take a picture with the camera, I had to specifically warn them because this camera is UNUSUALLY slow.
4, There is no obvious "fill-in" flash and the regular flash was too aggressive. Under indoor daylight conditions, the performance was fine but indoor dark conditions were difficult.

On the plus side, the pictures turned out nice and sharp, pretty well exposed, except for the flash problems I've already noted. I guess that's all I could really ask for. My next camera will probably cost four times as much but at least I won't spend my whole vacation foaming at the mouth.

Rating:
Summary: Not particulary user friendly, memory card problem too
Review: The camera offers a lot of features for the price. It is also compact, and the case is sturdy, and appears to be good quality. From the get-go I had problems with the memory card. It got stuck at first (needed pliars to remove) then it would not even read the card. According to Canon.com, my problem was due to a defect in the camera, which I recently sent back. (needless to say, Amazon returns/customer service is awesome!). Aside from the card problem, I found the camera not particularly user friendly. I read the long user manual, but had to continually consult it to operate the cameara, and do simple point and shoot shots. I began to forsee myself in the future on a vacation needing to bring the manual with me everywhere I went, in case I pressed one wrong button and was unable to figure out where to go next with it. In additon, I was unable to access one menu option even after reading and re-reading the particular section to address it. Since I had to return the camera since it was defective, I chose not to purchase a canon again, primarily because of the lack of "user friendly" buttons and method of accessing and changing the menus. Lastly it takes a pause before recording the image you are trying to capture, because of the auto focus. So if trying to photograph a moving child (like I was) I continually got blurry pictures, and often missed the shot I wanted because the auto focus caused such a delay (in other words you press the button to take the picture, and about a second or so later, it actually takes the picture). Hope this information helps. Except for the issues I mentioned, the picture clarity, resolution, and ease of uploading to computer etc were excellent. Using rechargable bateries also was fine, they did not drain very fast.

Rating:
Summary: WONDERFUL BEGINNER'S CAMERA!!
Review: I've had several digital cameras in the past, though some were cheap, others expensive. I've been amazed of how fast these digital cameras have dropped in price. This once was over $200, & now it's just over $100. Checking out the features low-cost, high quality (both camera and pictures), easy to handle,perfect for first time user. My daughter who was going away to school was never comfortable w/digitals, (she always wanted the kodak throwaways). I wanted her to capture some of her experiences & to be able to share & relive them at some future time. So when I loaded it up w/new batteries and a new CF card, I stuck it in her luggage w/the instructions and nothing else. A week later I had to pick her up for an appointment. Her priority was not bringing home laundry but to have her camera! She wanted to share, put online, etc. with both family and friends. So if you want something high quality, a no brainer, inexpensive, for yourself or your kids, you've found it!

Rating:
Summary: Windows 98 install problem, weak flash
Review: I bought this inexpensive camera for my young son and I to play around with, and it has met my needs and expectations. However...

* I had problems installing the software under Windows 98. I eventually solved the problem, but it was time-consuming and not fun. See below.

* The flash is pretty useless

My PC is running Windows 98, and I could not get the software to install. The installation process hung at "Please wait while installing ZoomBrowser EX", and after connecting the camera the PC could not find a driver to update.

I spent a fair amount of time tried many things (suspecting some sort of UCB conflict, and complications from preexisting problems with an external hard drive). I found one reference on the web to the same problem, without a resolution.

In the end, I found a relevant Canon page (see below), and carefully followed suggestions AND was careful to install only the TWAIN driver at first. The installation succeeded, and I uploaded the pictures to Microsoft "Picture It". I suspect the crucial step is that the camera must be connected both during the initial install-from-disc, AND during the subsequent reboot. This is not emphasized in the Canon material about installation problems.

After that I installed ZoomBrowser EX. I got the same hang, but after aborting the install the ZoomBrowser seems to be installed and functioning. Pretty good software, too. (...)


Rating:
Summary: step up and invest more...
Review: admittedly, this camera is very inexpensive for the feature set you get. but we needed to change batteries far too often to make this a worthwhile investment. Also the lack of optical zoom means you are essentially buying a 35 mm point and shoot, so great if that's what you want (and u r willing to spend $10/week on batteries for regular "vacation" usage). IF you want greater flexibility, and something u won't grow out of or tired of real fast, u should keep looking for something that may involve extra initially, but you will get more use of.
In short, great price, but serious shortfalls w. respect to battery life and camera capabilities. Also, the cycle time between shots (especially when using flash) is painfully sloooooooow.