Canon PowerShot A550

What do you look for in a budget camera? User-friendly interface for one, and most importantly good picture composition. Now here is a camera that doesn't complicate things for users. An apt entry-level camera is what it aims to be. We ran it through a thorough check. Let's analyze them.

Design
The make is similar to many of the other Canon cameras in the A-series. The A550 comes in an L-shaped body, which makes gripping the camera quite easy. The brushed silver finish, which is a little bland for my taste, is just what the A-series cameras are all about. Yet, how dashing can a budget camera really be?

The camera measures 91.2 x 64.0 x 43.1 mm and weighs about 160g. By any standards, this makes for a bulky buy. And you certainly can’t carry it around in your pocket. However, this gets compensated to a certain extent by the fact that it works on replaceable batteries. Hence, the weight!!

At the top of the A550 you will find the power on/off button, the Shutter release button surrounded by the zoom dial. Also sharing the same space is the menu dial. This you will find in all the A-series cameras and what it basically does is allows you to choose between the different modes at the turn of the dial. Nice!

The back of the camera contains a smallish screen and the remaining set of buttons is placed on the right. The navigational key also acts as the quick access to things like the flash, ISO settings, micro mode and burst mode. Placed between the navigational keys, the function set button gives access to all the functions and features of the camera. On the top left you will find the quick review button. The display change button is beside the menu button, and the optical viewfinder is placed right above the screen.

The rubber band on the left side of the camera protects the AV out jack, DC in and the USB slot.

Features
A 7MP camera, the A550 goes one notch higher than the usual cameras in the same price range with 4x optical zoom. This offers some relief from the regular 3x zooms available in the market. However, what disappoints me is the 2-inch LCD screen. It’s capable of displaying 86,000 pixels but just isn’t big enough. Also, the camera comes without the face detection technology.

The various modes that the camera offers, however, makes for a pleasant experience. For those who that don’t like fussing around too much with the camera manually, the mode dial is just about as far as they would have to look. It gives access to modes like Auto, Portrait, Landscape, Night Snapshot, Kids and Pets, Indoor, Scene and Manual. Further, more scene options are available through the scene mode. These consist - night scene, foliage, snow, beach, and fireworks.

Interestingly, the camera also offers presets like high-speed movie mode that offers 60fps with 320x240 QVGA. Also like most of the A-series cameras this one too works on two AA batteries. So whenever you run out of batteries, you can replace them conveniently at any other shop. Do remember to use only Alkaline-based batteries though.

Like all the Canon cameras, this one too features the AiAF (Artificial Intelligent Auto-Focus) that intelligently and automatically selects one or more focusing points based on factors, such as subject position and motion. A550 offers a 9-point AiAF system.

Performance
For an entry-level product, the camera does well in performance. The colors are neither dull nor too saturated. The detailing too is quite good, although the pictures lose some sharpness when blown up.

Pictures clicked in the night were considerably noisy at high ISO settings. The camera's performance in low-light conditions using the offered night scene modes was pretty bad. The pictures were very dark and dull and there was quite a lot of noise. The camera performed the best at ISO 80 with almost no noise and no purple fringe.

Daylight pictures turned up real sharp and crisp, and delivered a good amount of detailing here. Although, the pictures clicked of solid shapes and objects had little or no smudges, portions with foliage did smudge a lot and lose a lot of detail. Color production is quite likable, with very no saturation.

Conclusion
For the street price of about Rs. 10,000, the camera is a decent buy. I need not say, of course, that the camera is purely for point-and-shoot. The colors are decent, and the sharpness is quite good. But we did notice some smudging in underdeveloped portions of some pictures. Also I do think the screen poses a bit of a problem, but this may be because of the fact that larger screens these days have spoiled us.

Specs

Dimensions	91 x 64 x 43 mm
Weight	210 g
Type	Compact
Connectivity	USB 2.0
Storage	SD/SDHC card
Battery Type	AA (2) batteries (NiMH recommended)
LCD Type	2.0-inch, 86,000 pixels
View Finder	Optical
Sensor	CCD
Effective Pixels	7.1 Megapixel
ISO Sensitivity	Auto, 80, 100, 200, 400, 800
Optical Zoom	4x
Aperture	F2.6 - F5.5
Format	JPEG (EXIF 2.2)
Scene Modes	Auto, Portrait, Landscape, Night Snapshot, Kids and Pets, Indoor, night scene, foliage, snow, beach, and fireworks
White Balance	5 positions plus manual
Flash	Auto, On, Off, Manual (Red Eye, Slow Sync)
Self Timer	2 or 10 sec
Sound	Yes
Street Price	Rs. 10,000