Japanese camera maker Canon has moved into the top gear by ensuring high visibility and availability of its products in the rapidly growing digital camera market in India. Whether you?re a first-time digital camera owner, advanced hobbyist or full time professional, the company?s PowerShot range is packed with powerful and creative features to suit all your needs. From quick snaps to underwater pictures, action shots and more, there is a PowerShot model for every user.
For instance, the Canon PowerShot A3300 IS a good looking point-and-shoot camera available in five colours ?red, black, blue, silver and pink.
Amateurs with basic expectations, especially those who want to capture special moments with friends, family and pets will find its image quality and price quite impressive. At 10k, it has plenty of modes and effects to play with and has HD recording as well.
The A3300 that we reviewed was red with a black frame around it and a 3-inch LCD on the back side, adjacent to which lies a control panel comprising of playback, face select, cursor and menu buttons. The front features a super-zoom lens with 5x optical zoom and a flash above it. To shoot press the shoot button on the top, where you also have on/off button and a mode dial, which has various modes to choose from fitting one?s need and proficiency. The lower panel has a tripod slot along with battery and memory card panel.
When switched-on, the camera?s display shows indicators to the settings being deployed for a shot along with the battery status. The display goes-off automatically when not in use. PowerShot A3300 includes multiple modes such as video mode where you can shoot 1280×720 pixel HD video; discreet mode for silent and minus flash shooting; fish-eye effect with some fantastic and colourful effects; scene mode gives you options to shoot in multiple scenarios with most suitable settings and requirements and can click at a resolution of 4608 x 3456; easy mode for beginners, where auto itself decides a scene and chooses ideal settings; live mode where you can change the scenario nature from dark to light, neutral to vivid or cool to warm; lastly, programme mode, which allows options such as contrast, colour saturation and ISO 1600 etc.
The A3300 has 5x optical zoom and 4x digital zoom, which is altogether just 9x. The image blurs under poor light conditions, however, processing is fast. The shoot button would have been handier, had it been in place of the mode dial, which on the extreme right will not be as frequently used as the shoot and zoom lever button. Pictures taken in scene mode is the best of all and carries the same brilliance to a PC. The programme mode requires a little more experience with the camera. The HD video quality is impressive, but a good HD is available in a 6K camera too, for instance Fujifilm AV200.
The Canon PowerShotSX150?s new intelligent IS system is designed to identify the shooting situations and
apply the most appropriate form of stabilisation. The other important feature is the introduction of a 14.1 MP CCD (a 2 MP increase from the SE130?s 12.1 MP) and an image stabilised 5-60 mm 12x wide angle zoom that offers the same 28e-336 mm equivalent reach as its predecessor. When you switch on this camera, it takes about 2.7 seconds
before you can shoot your first picture, and can only capture a new photo every 1.1 seconds after that. This shutter lag might be frustrating when you shoot fast moving subjects. The decision to use a CCD for this camera could help in recording sharper images, but it does not help in reducing the noise. The SX150 is able to keep noise under this level at the base ISO of 80, but surpasses the1.5% mark at ISO100 and above, much lower than most compact cameras.
Depending on the focal length and desired shutter speed, there?s an excellent chance that your camera will expose best at ISO 100 or above on a bright, sunny day. You can shoot videos in 720p resolution at 30fps in quicktime format. The details captured are vivid and colours are excellent. A standard mini-USB port lets you upload photos and videos to your computer.
The SX150 can use SD, SDHC, and SDXC memory cards. The camera is powered by AA batteries but after capturing about 80-90 pictures and reviewing them on the LCD, the alkaline gets exhausted. You?ll get better battery life if you opt for rechargeable batteries.
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