Happy Mother's Day! Happy Father's Day! Happy Graduation! Photo.net has great photography gift ideas for the Mom, Dad, or Grad in your life. Shop for camera bags, lenses, DSLRs, and more...
Clubs, bars, and small venues are the places where most concert and live music photographers get their start, the reason being that there are fewer restrictions since the performers are less likely to...
It's difficult to make exact measurements of timing, but the A610 is pretty
fast. I'd estimate that the time from hitting the "on" button to taking the first
shot is around 1.5 seconds. The shutter lag after prefocusing (1/2 depressing the
shutter release) seems instant, though it's probably similar to most DSLRs at
around 100ms. Autofocus is fast, maybe averaging around 0.5s. Canon claim to have
reduced AF time by 60% and improved focusing ability by two full stops in low
light conditions compared to the A95.
In continuous mode I measured a maximum frame rate of approximately 2.8 frames
per second shooting for 8 frames in macro mode and at the highest quality and
resolution JPEGs (large/fine). Canon's specs are 2.4 frames/sec
Noise
The Powershot A610 has 5 ISO settings, Auto, 50, 100, 200 and 400. The auto
setting isn't as useful as it might be in dim light because it seems very
reluctant to use ISO 400 and so gives shutter speeds slower than might be easily
handheld under some circumstances. Noise at ISO 50 is very low and even at ISO
100 is pretty good. There is a noticeable increase in noise at ISO 200 and even
more at 400 (as expected). However even at ISO 400 I would say noise isn't
excessive. For example in a 4x6 print of an ISO 400 image, noise isn't really a
problem unless you look for it in areas of uniform tone. Pixel peepers - those
looking at screen images at 100% magnification - may be bothered by it, but by
digicam standards, it's not bad.
Below are 100% crops of images taken of a gray card.
Chromatic aberration and "Purple Fringing"
Both CA and PF are most noticeable with dark lines against a bright
background. Below is an image shot at ISO 50. Exposure was 1/400s at f4.1 (in
auto mode) at full zoom (140mm equivalent focal length) using evaluative
metering. The exposure seems spot on.
The following images are 100% crops from the original image from
the four corners and the center of the image. As you can see, both purple
fringing and chromatic aberration are very low, in fact none is really visible at
all. Pretty good performance from a digicam lens.
At the widest setting, chromatic aberration and purple fringing
are still under good control. The images below were taken at the 35mm setting and
f4. The upper left and right corners are shown here at 100% crop. There is a
small amount of purple fringing, but you have to look for it.
Image quality
I'd rate the overall image quality as being good to very good.
Focus is accurate and the lens is sharp. It is a 5MP camera so you're probably
not going to want to make poster sized images from it, but it certainly produces
good 8x10 images.
In a totally unfair test I compared the $300 5MP digicam with an
8.3MP $2000 EOS 20D + EF 70-300/4-5.6IS. Well, you can guess which had the better
image, but perhaps not by as much as you might think. These are all samples at
100% cropping size taken from the full sized images.
The A610 really doesn't come off too badly here. In a 4x6 or even
a 5x7 print, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. At 8x10 it would be
easier.. Pretty much what you'd expect, but it does show that if you're mostly
making small prints, a 5MP digicam is really all you need.
White Balance
The Powershot A610 has 8 setting for white balance, Auto,
Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, Underwater and Custom.
The "Fluorescent" setting is for use with warm white and cool-white tubes, while
the "Fluorescent H" setting is for daylight balanced fluorescent light. The
"Underwater" setting is for use when the A610 is used with the available
waterproof case (WP-DC90) and is designed to correct the blue cast often found in
underwater images. There is no specific "Shady" setting as is found on some
cameras, but "Cloudy" is similar in effect. The "Custom" setting allows white
balance to be set on the basis of an image of a neutral toned object (typically a
white or gray card).
It's often better to select the appropriate fixed setting than to
depend on auto white balance. While auto does a decent job under most
circumstances (particularly outdoors), the fixed setting can sometimes do better,
especially when the subject isn't in sunlight.
The images shown below indicate the difference between the auto
WB setting and the cloudy WB stetting for a cloudy day. The image on the
left was shot using auto WB. It actually is probably closer to what I saw than
the image on the right, which was shot using the cloudy setting. However most
people would prefer the image on the right!
As I've found on other Canon Cameras, under tungsten illumination
auto WB gives quite warm images. It's said that this is deliberate since people
expect indoor shots to be warm in tone, not neutral. Whatever the reason here are
the results:
The shot using tungsten WB is very neutral, measuring 140, 142,
141 RGB values. Auto is very warm (RGB 171, 127, 54)
Below is a series of shots of a gray card made under
typical Cool-White fluorescent tube (Phillips F15T8/HL Cool) illumination. As you
can see both Auto and Fluorescent WB settings do a good job. Fluorescent-H
doesn't do well since the lights were not daylight balanced.
Distortion
Like just about every digicam on the market (and many DSLR
wideangle zooms), the Powershot A610 shows visible barrel distortion at the
widest lens setting (35mm) and essentially none at the telephoto end (140mm).
Whether distortion bothers you or not probably depends on your
subjects and your workflow. If you print directly from the camera and shoot a lot
of subjects with straight lines (buildings for example) then distortion will
bother you. On the other hand if you typically don't shoot subjects with straight
lines (people for example) and you tend to edit your images on the PC, then it
may not. Simple barrel distortion is pretty easy to correct in many image
editors. So distortion isn't a good thing and it would be better if it were
lower, but it can be dealt with.
Macro
You can get really close with the A610. So close in fact that
it's hard to take any shot without the shadow of the lens getting in the frame.
The front of the lens is within 1cm at closest focus in macro mode at maximum
magnification (lens zoomed to the wide setting). The two shots below were taken
of a transparent scale on a light box because I couldn't get this close to a
subject and still illuminate it from the top!
As you can see, the size of the field is about 0.8" x 0.6" at
maximum magnification, which is pretty good. Not so good is that there is
significant barrel distortion and on close inspection you can also see signs of
chromatic aberration. If you don't get quite so close and don't photography
rectangular grids, things look much better though. The image below is downsized
(not cropped) from the original.
Flash
Like all built in flash systems on small digicams the flash power
is moderate. Canon specs it as covering a range of from 1.5-13.8 ft./45cm - 4.2m
at the wide setting (35mm equiv) and 1.5-9.8 ft./45cm - 3.0m at the Telephoto end
(140mm).
At the widest setting (35mm) the flash does show some fall off in
the corners when illuminating a flat surface. In actual use this isn't nearly as
noticeable, since the main subject is usually in the center of the frame and
things at the edges and corners are some distance behind - which would result in
less illumination anyway.
Flash illumination with the zoom at the wide (35mm) setting
Conclusions
Digicams have come a long way. The Powershot A610 has a better
lens than the A95 it replaced and the price hasn't gone up (in fact in real terms
is probably cheaper!). There's little that's missing that most amateur
photographers could want in a digicam. It has manual, aperture priority, shutter
priority and program modes, along with a host of "scene" modes for the
inexperienced photographer. 5MP is enough to make good quality 8x10 prints, which
is probably as large as most users will want and if you push it you might even
squeeze an 11x14 out of it. If you want more pixels, the Canon Powershot A620 is
essentially an identical camera, but with a 7.1 MP sensor. The A610 is powered by
easily obtainable AA batteries and power drain seems low. I can't say how low,
but I've been playing with it for a week and the original set of AA cells is
still fine.
Could it be better? Sure. There's no RAW file mode, though most
users of this class of camera probably wouldn't use it even if there was. It
could come with a larger SD card than 16MB, but I guess that would increase the
cost. It could come with some sort of case or cover. The optical viewfinder could
be better, though most users will probably use the LCD screen and I suppose we
should be grateful that there is an optical viewfinder at all, since quite a few
digital cameras now depend only on the LCD to see what the camera is pointing at!
It would also be nice if shutter speeds up to 15 seconds were available in all
modes, not just Manual and Shutter priority. There's noticeable distortion at
wideangle settings, but that's pretty typical for digicams.
I'd say the A610 is ideal for two types of user. The first is
someone who wants to get started in digital, but who wants something more than a
simple "auto everything" P&S. The A610 offers both fully auto modes and fully
manual modes, with everything in between! You can certainly learn using the A610.
The second is someone who wants a small, pocketable, backup camera for their
DSLR. They will want control over ISO, exposure, focus and everything else
they are used to with their DSLR, such as white balance, exposure
compensation and flash exposure compensation. The A610 will give them that. It
even has a histogram to check exposure.
I can't really find too many faults with the A610 and certainly
not at its price point of under $300. If I didn't already have more digital
cameras than I can use, I might even buy one myself!
Acknowledgement
Photo.net would like to thank Canon USA Inc. for providing this
camera for review
The reason you have variable shutter speeds depending on aperture is that the aperture is also used as shutter. So the more closed the shutter is, the more quickly it can be opened and closed.
I'm afraid Canon only supplied an A610, not an A620! I'd expect to see maybe a little more noise but not a lot. I really don't know of anyone who has had a chance to compare them directly side by side.
The A620 and SD550 both share the same 7.1 MP 1/1.8" (7.2 x 5.3 mm) sensor chip (made I think by Sony) and tests of the SD550 have certainly not reported it to be excessively noisy, in fact it has gotten pretty good reviews with low noise from iso 50-200 and the expected increase to visible (but acceptable) noise at ISO 400. Since the A620 and SD550 were lauched at the same time (August 2005) and use the same sensor chip, I'd expect their firmware and noise reduction algorithms to be similar.
I too am considering the purchase of a Canon PowerShot A620, not as a backup, but in fact as a "spouse camera" for my wife who is not as much of an enthusiast to use for family snapshots. I am also considering the somewhat similar Nikon Coolpix 7600 and 7900 models. I know there are many good digital camera review websites, but would also appreciate any photo.net user comparison comments. Thanks Bob and thanks all!
Thanks for the review, looks like my kind of camera.
Sharp lens, lightweight, easy on batteries, good swiveling LCD, Good video mode, fast turn on, fast focus, DIGICII chip, 5mp or 7 with 620, lots of manual control...Bet Canon will sell tons of these.
hmm... I too wonder how A620 compare with A610. The 7mp sensor in A620 may be less noisy than the 5mp sensor used in A610 (like from S50 to S70). But since A610 has d!gic II, it may help a bit.
You have off-by-1 error in your FPS calculation, that's why your number is higher than Canon's. Let me describe why: let's say we have a camera that has a 2 shot buffer and can shoot 1 FPS. A stop watch might show photos taken at time 0.0 and time 1.0. Calculated the way you did (e.g. 2 shots, 1 second elapsed) you would call that 2 FPS! And if the buffer were 3 shots, the times would be 0.0, 1.0, 2.0 (or 3 shots in 2 seconds.) Just by adding buffer space, the FPS would drop to 1.5 FPS -- which is obviously not right.
Erik - You're right. I must have had a brain freeze when I was writing the review. I got 8 frames in 2.79 seconds. That's an average of 0.398 seconds between each frame, or a frame rate of 2.5 frames per second.
Thanks for correcting my error. I will revise the text.
I also read somewhere (mind you: I don't remember where...) that this 5MP 1/1.8" in the A610 (and some others) was not the same as the previous 5MP 1/1.8" sensor, but an updated and better one.
You may find this thread on dpreview interesting: the A610 may exhibit more noise at first, but it looks sharper as well (less noise reduction? more sharpening?) and keep in mind that the A610 was under-exposed by 2/3IL compared to the A620...
Therefore, I would say that the A610 seems to be slightly better regarding low-light performance.
Ok, here's a summary of what I found. Sony have developed two 5MP 1/1.8 CCD: ICX452 and ICX455. ICX452 was developed in 2002 and does not have VGA video capablity. ICX455 is the newer 5MP 1/1.8 chip(developed in 2003?). The new ICX455 is a HAD CCD. ICX489 is the new 1/1.8 7MP chip that support video (developed in 2004).
What's interesting is that ICX455 appears to be the most sensitive chip of the three, with G signal sensitivity of 250mV. 235mV for ICX452 and 168mV for ICX489.
ICX455 (and ICX452) also have higher saturation signal (apparently a measurement of dynamic range) of 500mV. ICX489 has the saturation signal of 385mV.
What does it really say about the chips and the cameras that use those chips? And what about noise? I don't know. A lot also depends on the camera manufacturer's image processing algorithm.
There's a good development chart here:
http://www.sony.net/Products/SC-HP/cx_news/vol39/pdf/icx495aqn.pdf
While you get lots of manual function with A610, you don't get ISO 800 and ISO 1600 which is available on the F10. And ISO 400 is so good that it is as clean as ISO 100 from most digital cameras that you can set it as your normal ISO.
To me other than shutter speed adjustment manual functions are not too useful with small CCD like this - f2.8 has so deep a DOF that it is not too important. What I missed is slow shutter speed to give you some blurr like water blurring when flowing etc.
The main bad things about the F10 is the stupid charger system, the use of xD card, and the lack of flash controls ( minor weakness since you won't be using it much ).
The viewfinder of all these small digicam are as good as useless since they ony show typically about 80-85% of the screen, and do not show any camera settings at all.
I can count the number of times I use the optical finder on the fingers of one hand ( ie less than 5 times ) on these small digicams.
As for blurring of low contrast details - you will see this only on ISO 800 and above.
If you use the viewfinder, the camera is more stable, give you at least one more stop. And in continuous mode, it can be used to trace your subject.
To me, the F10 just apply more noise reduction in-camera, you can achieve the same result in PP.
The tele end of A610/620 is 140mm/f4.1, the F10 is 108mm/f5.0, the A610/620 also has a twists and swivels LCD, longer battery life, manual flash control, can attach lens ...
--If you use the viewfinder, the camera is more stable, give you at --least one more stop. And in continuous mode, it can be used to trace --your subject.
Not really - I find that it's about the same ( at least for me ). I have taken pictures ( at wide angle I admit ) at 1/10 s with very good results with the F10.
--To me, the F10 just apply more noise reduction in-camera, you can --achieve the same result in PP.
This I disagree. Picture from F10 at ISO 400 is just as detail as many other digicam ( about 5-6 mpixel ) at about ISO 100 or so. Just take a look at the sample pictures from wwww.imaging-resource.com. As for ISO 800 it will put most digicam's ISO 400 to shame with good details. ISO 1600 is quite blurred due to its built-in noise reduction but still produces good results. Don't take my word for it - just look at the samples at www.imaging-resource and see for yourself.
--The tele end of A610/620 is 140mm/f4.1, the F10 is 108mm/f5.0, the --A610/620 also has a twists and swivels LCD, longer battery life, --manual flash control, can attach lens ...
Fully agree with this - this is the weakness of the F10; ie no-swivel LCD, poorer Tele etc, no lens attachments available, no manual flash etc. For its size, these are not available, but then all cameras are compromises. For me, I have decided to take the compromise of an excellent quality CCD and have much less features. There are also some problems with Purple fringes at wide angle near the edge of the picture - some F10 suffers more than others, but then what do you expect from a $330/- digicam?
Other weakness
- very stupid menu system that requires you to press all over the place.
- Slow shutter speed only available in Night mode ( from 1/4 to 3 secs ), and very slow shutter speed only available when long shutter settings is turn on ( very tedious process )and you can get 3-15 secs using the night mode.
- Silly charging and picture downloading system.
- more expensive xD card.
- insists on using ISO 800 indoor scene using flash.
- Finicky flash system which often underexpose.
- Tendency to blow out highlights ( corrected by dialing a 1/3 EV ).
- No control over contrast, sharpness and saturation.
I just got the A610 and it is impressive, hundreds of test shots so far and I cant make in NOT focus correctly. ASA 400 in low light is excellent also. I did not like 2 manuals to look thru as they are not well written..Digital zoom is very usable to my surprise. Lens is noisy zooming. Flash is a little too bright for my taste. when viewing pics in playback and you zoom in it takes big jumps in size
not smooth zooming in. Video mode I played with just in standard mode.
No need to buy a video camera now, just more memory. flip out LCD screen is very handy to have. Battery life is excellent. Paid $225 afer $75 rebate(now over)from Office Depot. Had a 256mb sandisk card which holds about 95? best quality pics. Easy to hold still since it has some weight to it with the 4 batteries in it. Still have lots to learn about it thru the manuals.
To call the optical viewfinders in these type cameras "less than useless" is an equally useless and silly statement. Photographers have been living with viewfinders that showed much less than 100% of the image for years with rangefinder cameras and compact 35mm p&s models. Leica rangefinders, hardly a useless (or cheap) camera has about the same accuracy as far as percentage of image seen within the viewfinder. Not acknowledging the value of the option of an optical viewfinder for some very simple reasons such as power savings and criticizing it, as some are doing in this comment section, is being less than knowledgeable to someone who depends on reading reviews like these to make an informed decision.
I own a Canon A610 & am thoroughly pleased with it. At the highest resolution, 2592 X 1944 pixels, the images are sharp enough to print at 12 X 8 inches. Low light performance is good, at 400 iso there can be a little noise but nothing too distracting. Size-wise the camera is small enough to carry in a jacket pocket & this is useful in situations where I don't want to take an SLR sized camera (e.g. concerts, football games etc.). Definitely recommend for those in the market for a good P&S digital camera.
, November 15, 2005; 12:09 A.M. 
