Compact power!

I bought the A710 IS a week ago at Sydney airport and am already very enthusiastic about it. This is my 3rd camera I purchased this year, having owned an A610 (a colleague dropped it..) and a S2 IS (a friend bought it off me as he lives in a place with little choice of cameras). All Canons, as they have make excellent photos, have lots of manual control, use AA batteries and SD memory cards in stead of propriety cards like Sony (another brand I would not mind buying were it not for the cards).

Although of course I can't provide a durability report, I am very happy with the camera so far. I was looking for something compact (both the A610 and S2 use 4 AA batteries and are a bit bulky as a result) yet powerful. That means more than 4X zoom and around 7MP so I can blow up photos to A3 size without loosing too much quality. Although I will miss the S2's awesome 12X zoom, the A710 has a very nice 6X zoom going just that extra distance and beating most competitors in the process. It is stabilized too and to good effect: one of the first shots I took was of a ship at sea at full zoom, taken from a plane as it was heading to Amsterdam airport. It came out beautifully. You can use the zoom during shooting video as well, something the A610 can not but the S2 can. It is the same high quality video (640x480@30fps)though it is still limited to 1 GB. It records sound too of course. Photos are sharp and have pretty accurate colours, which I find important. A lot of brands oversaturate the colours making them look nicer than reality. Canon does not do that although you can change the settings if you do prefer it like that (vivid, neutral, B&W, Sepia, vivid blue, vivid green, vivid red and a few more).

A lovely 2.5" lcd screen (but not swivel!) and an optical viewfinder, which I much prefer above electronic ones. The menus are clear and a beginning photographer will be able to quickly use the camera and make great pictures with it. It does have heaps of manual controls as well: aperture priority, shutter speed priority and full manual. Those not keen on experimenting can use the large number of scene modes to handle just about every situation. It focuses really quickly and shot-to-shot speeds are good as well but the flash takes a few seconds to recharge, blacking out the screen in the process. You can take macro photos from 1cm distance, not bad indeed!

The camera is made of grey coloured metal and feels sturdy. It is not a super-compact but small enough to fit in many pockets. The controls are well placed and there are not too many of them. The batteries (2AA) and the memory card are behind the same solid feeling cover, but the ports are (still) behind a flimsy rubber one.

In short, the A710 IS is a powerful camera with 7MP sensor and a stabilized 6X optical zoom that delivers excellent photos but is compact enough to be taken with you anywhere at all times. I give it 4 1/2 stars, 5 if it had had a swivel screen. I doubt you will be disappointed by this one.