Rating: 
Summary: Canon Powershot Best In Class!
Review: After carefully reading through literally hundreds of reviews on the 2 megapixel digital cameras with optical zoom out there at this time, and a visit to two stores to play with them in person, I decided on the Canon Powershot A40. This is why: the camera body is sturdy and it is easy to hold and shoot. It looks like a normal camera so fits in most point-and-shoot camera bags. The camera is also small enough to fit in the pocket of most cargo pants. It has many accessories available and has upgradable lenses. The camera is somewhat intuitive to use once you know what the symbols for the buttons indicate- all of them are multifunctional. The only downsides are that the knob is a little less than ergonomic and the manual is horribly organized. The camera itself is fantastic overall. It does eat batteries quickly when connected to the computer for downloading, but on the road it is very conservative (I reccommend buying the ac adapter for downloading unless you have an unlimited supply of batteries). The optical zoom flows smoothly into the digital. The software is very easy to use and you will definitely find it useful. It also comes with a lite version of Adobe- which is a great piece of software to have on it's own. What about the pictures? The pictures are fantastic! The shots are much more akin to a manual 35 mm camera than a point-and-shoot. The colors are very vivid. You'd never be able to take shots like this with a regular camera. It can take a picture in a darkened room and make it as clear as if the lights were on. All together this is a great camera and I'm glad I bought it! I highly reccommend you consider it too! (Aside, Amazon.com has better prices than ALL the retail stores, it's trustworthy and just as good as most internet stores/auctions so I suggest you buy it here.)
Rating: 
Summary: It records Video !!!
Review: I bought this camera after looking around for awhile ... I chose the Canon A40 from Amazon because of the options you get a t this price is great. I have an 11 month old who is getting ready to walk and this camera will record a video file. That is good because I don't always have the camcorder handy. My 3 year old likes to look at the pictures right after I take them. ...
Rating:
Summary: one of a kind ...
Review: this camera is unbelievable.. crystal clear photos.. one of the best 2 megapixels camera out there with a cheap price.. you guys should buy this.. i just bought it...and i am having so much fun with it .. been taking it with my girlfriend.. she loves it too.. recommended of course...
Rating:
Summary: head of the class
Review: I have read several reviews and I personally tried the Canon A40, Pentax 230 and Sony P71 in the past 6 weeks. I took multiple pictures with each camera and compared the output on screen and in print side by side. I finally decided the A40 by Canon was the keeper. It wasn't perfect because it was bigger and heavier. Also, the menus could be better and a 4 way navigation button would have been nice. The A40 did have the best battery life of the 3 and seemed to have the best track record for most pictures in focus. The major selling point was the picture quality. The A40 provided the best exposures, most accurate colors, and prints that were the most pleasing to the eye. I figure the pictures are why you buy a camera not size and weight. When I took pictures of the same sceen with all 3 cameras, printed them up and showed them to my friends, they universally picked the shots take with the Canon as the best. It is the best value for the money IMHO.
Rating:
Summary: Great Choice
Review: This camera has an excellent picture quality at an affordable price.
The provided 8MB Compact flash card is not enough at all especially with high resolution photos, so i recommend buying at least, extra 64MB.
The only trouble i have is while focusing with very low light conditions: the AutoFocus has problems on those conditions, but Canon worked on that and posted a patch at the web site.
Despite this small detail, the camera is a perfect choice for a starter (and not so starter!)
Rating: 
Summary: smokingbear maybe right.....
Review: i have had this camera for 3 months now. I took this camera to 2 trips and boy It *was* fun. I have taken over 4k shots with it, done all kind of shots, outdoor, indoor, day and night shoot, scenary, paranorma(stitch!), stationary / moving , special effect........ But most of my picture(1600x1200) are kind of burr when view @1600x1200. Disappointed quality compared to my friends canon S200, also a 2M pixel camera. At first I feel the A40 is very easy to use(of course, there is a learning curve involved.). The various settings on the camera are easy to set without going thru alot of menu(cf. olyumpus camera). The color is Excellent but a bit over saturated. I found the color is closer to the original subject if u have the 'photoeffect' set to 'neutral'. Under very favourable/strong lighting condition, the picture quality is excellent. But the subject cannot be very far away(within a couple of feet.) or it will burr. And I have found out most of my distant shot(landscape shot with landscape mode set on A40) are kind of burr too. Sometimes, some flower marco shots(again u need to set marco mode on the camera) are out of focus. It is extremely difficult to obtain correct focus on marco/close up shots. its like a hit and miss thing. It also wont focus on RED flower. I dont know if its the Autofocus system malfunction or some other issues. I have already applied the official canon AF adjustment upgrade(BTW its not a firmware upgrade!) but cannot notice any improvement. Since I couldnt confirm the 13.6 Focal length problem as mentioned by smokingbear before the update. But I tend to agree to smokingbear that maybe the update is just a 'patch' to the F/L info and not a 'fix' to the actual focus problem. In low light condition u definitly need to use flash to get sharp picture. And this camera will not focus in low light even u have the Canon AF-assist light turned on. And the redeye reduction flash is a joke. u will *most* likely to get redeye if u turned it on. I like the manual function of this camera. There is alot of (read *alot*) settings on the manual shutter control(from 15s to 1/1500). on the other hand, the manual aperture setting has much less to choose from. Another feature i like is the ability to turn off sharpening. It can be done later using photoshop, so there is no need to use the onboard sharpening for each photo. The battery life is excellent I have my lcd display on all the time. Talking about LCD, U do need a bigger monitor to check if your picture is out of focus or not. Almost all review on this camera never discuss the Auto focus issue which i find interesting. seems nobody mention canon is notorious about their AF system. If this camera had the ability to produce focus and sharp 1600x1200 picture all the time, I will certainly vote A40 to be the best digital camera to own right now. But this camera can produce maybe just 50% good quality 1600x1200 stuff ...
Rating:
Summary: Best "Standard" Digital Camera for the Money
Review: I did a lot of research before I bought a digital camera, and the Canon A40 came out as the best by far in the $200 - $400 price range. The 2 MPixel system gives nice computer jpegs and nice prints. The 4"x6" prints that I've made at our local Walmart look great and the colors are perfect, like professionally developed 35 mm prints. I could not tell at all that they were "digital". They were certainly nicer than 35mm prints developed at most "24 hour" shops, and cheaper as well. As an aside, I tried some 1-1.3 MPixel cameras and found that in most cases I could detect their "blockiness" in prints and in jpegs viewed on a computer monitor. Remember that you often need to crop and then blow up pictures for web pages and the like, and the 1 Mpixel cameras will give you problems here. 2 MPixel seems to take you just above the "blockiness" threshold for most jpegs unless you really have to blow them up a lot. The Canon A40 itself has many excellent features, and after taking well over a thousand shots I've not had any serious problems. I've even found that you can do things like taking a picture through a telescope, binoculars or a magnifying glass. You need a tripod and it can be tricky, but you can do it. I especially like the long time exposures you can do, and the macro mode for closeups. The software that came with the camera works just fine on my windows 2000 machine, and downloading and viewing is a breeze using the USB port. It would be helpful to have some basic photo editing software, like adobe photoshop lite or macromedia fireworks. Get two sets of NiMH batteries (one in the camera and one charged and handy for when replacement is needed). I picked up an Everyready NiMH charger and 8 NiMH batteries at (local store) for something like $30. A charged set will last for many hundreds of shots depending on how often you use the flash. I also recommend getting at least a 128 MB flash card as you'll be surprised how many pictures you take once you get one of these cameras. I found the perfect case at (local store) for about $10. The three best things about digital cameras are:
1) You know exactly what you have when you shoot a photo
2) You can take as many photos as you like until you get that perfect one, and then just delete the bad ones
3) The fidelity is basically perfect unless you blow up prints to a large size. You don't have any devloping flaws to contend with, and once you have it in digital format, it will never deteriorate. Someone looking at these photos one hundred years from now will see them as you do now (though no doubt they'll have more advanced technology by then).
Rating:
Summary: A field report
Review: To sum up: This is a great camera for its price, and more. Overall: I got this gem in June and felt tempted to join the raves right away, but then I decided to wait for the impending trip across Argentina. I used it from the Andes to Iguazú, in cloudy, rainy, sunny weather; in freezing cold and on hot days; in the desert-like mountains and in the spray of the Iguazú Falls.
This is one rugged camera which offers great features, especially if you are used to Canon products: I had the A-1 and still use the EOS 500N and found it supremely easy to get into the groove of this camera, in fact, this very reason won me over compared to the Sony P-50 and the Olympus D-510. I won't bother you with repeating the features, you can look them up any day on the Canon website. Remember though, the video capability is nice, but you can't turn the videos 90° - I have to watch my Iguazú sweep with my head on my shoulders... And the artistic options like B/W or Sepia (the 1900s style) are definitely cute. Also, other than many guys on this site, I consider myself a dedicated amateur and DO use all the extras and gimmicks of this camera. Battery: As is common knowledge, plain batteries won't do it. I got the Amazon Kodak set plus the Olympus charger and batteries, and there is no problem even though theoretically you are supposed to use 1600 mAh only: these have 1700 and 1850 mAh respectively (and I'm charging the 1850 Kodaks in the 1700 Olympus charger); no sweat. The new rechargeables lasted me a day of heavy picture-taking, but they seem to last longer with time. If you use it now and then, we are talking weeks and months, it might even be smarter to use standard batteries. Lens: Just great, the optical zoom equals SLR 38-105mm, which gives you many options. Forget about the digital zoom, you can do that with software on your PC. Memory card: Obviously, the 8 MB card that comes with it is a pathetic joke, but hey, do you expect your SLR camera to come with a stash of films? For a holiday, I'd recommend two cards of 128 MBs each, this gives you about 270 pix at highest size/resolution. Remember that opposed to a conventional camera, you can sit down every night with a beer/wine/cocktail/mineral water (delete as appropriate) and delete the failed shots, so you'll need a lot less takes compared to 35mm films. Card reader: Frankly, if you're not a professional photographer or terminally ill, why bother with one? I downloaded a 128 MB card in about 10 minutes, which means 135 perfect pix or about 4 secs each, or more at lower quality. Win XP seems to be even faster. And how often do you need to download that amount? Exposure: Here's the downside - if it can be considered such at this price. The camera will always lighten up the dark spots in your picture as opposed to a SLR which will find a compromise. This resulted under hazy conditions in plain white skies. Then again, you can fix this with the exposure meter by changing it to -1 or less. If you want to see examples, check out the pix at Webshots (User: chileno66, not all are with this camera!). If in doubt, don't hesitate: This is one great camera in its range!
Rating:
Summary: PICTURE QUALITY
Review: I LIKE THE SIMPLICITY OF THE CAMERA. MY WIFE CAN EVEN USE IT. THE PROGRAM THAT COMES WITH IT ON THE CD DOES NOT HAVE AN ENHANCING SET-UP. MY PICTURES DO NOT COME OUT AS SHARP AS MY WIFE'S REGULAR CAMERA. THEY ARE "ALL RIGHT" BUT SLIGHTLY BLURRY.I DON'T KNOW HOW TO SHARPEN THE PICTURE
Rating:
Summary: Great Camera!!!
Review: For the $$$, can't be beat!!!! I've shot 2000+ pictures with my A40 of Alaska, Sunsets, Moonshots, Flowers, GOM Offshore Steel, Workshop, etc. and hadn't had one problem with this camera! As they say, seeing is believing. If you have any doubts about A40's abilities, take a look at Webshots "torretab". The 1600 X 1200 resolution pics (98%) are taken with the Canon A40. Colors are natural, resolution is as good as it gets with a 2 meg camera and images have a look of quality 35mm film work! It is loaded with usable features that work well and provide a lot of flexibility in the digicam realm. I've been looking to step up to a 4 meg pixel camera, but other than for printing larger than 8 x 10's, the A40 does an admirable job for everything I've asked it to do!! Unless you want to spend a lot more money, the A40 may fill the task for you to!
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