Customer Reviews

Canon PowerShot A40 2MP Digital Camera w/ 3x Optical Zoom

5 star:		(99)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I'm new to digital photography and was very impressed with Canon's A40. The camera has similar features to the proven A20 model, but distinguishes itself in several ways.

For example, the A40 feels solid and is very attractive. It also captures 10-30 second movie clips in AVI format which can be played on Quicktime. The movie images are a bit grainy, but movements and sounds are captured quite well. Using some software which was included with the A40, I was able to convert the AVI clips into MPEG and view them on my PocketPC. Finally, the camera is less expensive than the A20, but delivers the same quality images.

My experience with the A40 pictures is that 2Mexapixels are fine. The clarity of the images is remarkable. And making short movie clips is an added benefit to getting the A40.

For the price and photo quality, the A40 is an exceptional product and deserves everyone of its 5 stars.

When I purchased this camera as my entry into the digital world, I wanted to get a camera that would serve two purposes in one. I wanted something easy enough to use that the technology of the thing was not overwhelming to a first time user and I wanted something that had enough in the way of features so that I would not feel as though I needed to get a bigger and better model in 6 months. I really feel that the Canon A-40 neatly fulfills those two needs.

You can definitely get wrapped around the axle with all the cameras on the market these days. The feature list seems to be endless. In order to choose a camera that was right for me, I broke it down into the things that were important to me.

2 Megapixel camera - That number really translates into photo quality. With this camera you will be able to take and print JPEG images up to an 8x10 size with amazing clarity and detail. I thought at first that I should go for the maximum Megapixel rating possible but I have no need for prints of any larger size (besides my printer will not print anything larger.). I am quite pleased with the images that the camera produces with perhaps only a couple of exceptions but really nothing that deals with the resolution of the photos.

3X Optical Zoom and 4X Digital Zoom - For those of you who are familiar with a 35mm film camera the 3X Optical Zoom is the equivalent of 35mm-105mm zoom lens. One small complaint is that the zoom control is touchy and it can be difficult to adjust it into the proper range. With a bit of practice this can be overcome. The 4X optical zoom is selectable and works quiet well but there is a trade off (isn't all of life?). Using the digital zoom results in a loss of resolution with the image. For images that you send via e-mail this doesn't really represent a problem, but for those images that are to be printed it can become a factor.

1.5 inch LCD display and optic viewfinder - The optic viewfinder is a bit dinky and only shows about 80% of the actual recorded image. I have to confess I don't really use this feature preferring the LCD screen more. The LCD display on the other hand is another trade off. Although you get a bright color display of the image you are going to record, the screen tends to use battery power at an alarming rate. I was able to take over 100 photos with the regular alkaline batteries that were provided with the camera and didn't really see this as a serious problem. As a side note, I did purchase NIMH (nickel metal hydride) rechargeable batteries to use with the camera and have no complaints in this area.

Compact Flash memory system - This is a great memory system in my opinion. It is small and relatively easy to use. The camera comes equipped with an 8MB-memory card. At the highest resolution this card will hold about 8 photos which I will admit is not many. I quickly relegated the 8-MB card to a reserve role and now use a 128-MB card. It is a bit intoxicating knowing I can take about 200 high quality images and not have to have them developed in the traditional sense. You can preview each image and delete the ones that you don't want or keep them all. The camera has a USB port for direct downloading to your computer or you can opt for a card reader, which does not require the camera.

Beyond these basic features the camera will take pictures in a fully automatic mode (including flash) or will allow the uses to operate the camera in manual for a multitude of effects. I find that the auto settings work very well for the most part. My only complaint would be that from time to time the camera will flash when it probably shouldn't have and wash the photo out because of overexposure. This really isn't much of a problem in my opinion for two reasons. I didn't have to pay to have the photo developed to see the problem and it doesn't happen all that often.

You can do some incredible things such as "stitching" photo after adjacent photo creating a 360-degree panoramic photo of your surroundings or recording short AVI format movies.

Weighing in at 8.8 oz with the following dimensions - Depth 1.5 in, Height 2.8, in Width 4.3 in, This is not the most compact camera on the market so if your looking for the smallest model available you need to probably look elsewhere. I like it size though. It is just big enough to feel sturdy and durable but small enough to carry most places.

I find that the camera controls are conveniently placed and are very user friendly. Most are menu driven with the LCD display providing necessary guidance to use the features.

There are a wealth of accessories for this camera including replaceable lenses and a waterproof (to 200 feet) housing I haven't had the opportunity to use these items yet but when and if I do I will update this review.

Overall I would have to say that I am very pleased with this camera and that I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone.

This camera has so many great features and is very easy to use. Here are my best features on why I bought over other Canon camera or Fujis (My experience: NIKON COOLPIX is best for camera buffs, but this one beats all for everyday shooting, travel shooting, family photos, and professinal looking shots within budget - (...)

(...)1. Largest resolution and largest size gives best 4x6 and 5x7 prints. I take all my photos on the CompactFlash card to Wolf Camera and they print them on their big machine. go professional for $.50 a photo - worth it everytime
2. Can take one pix in color, the next in B&W
3. Can use manual mode for faster shutter speed and/or aperature setting. Or can use AUTO like I do everytime
4. Flash red-eye works most of the time, but I do correct 2 out of 5 red-eyes b4 I take my pix to Wolf Camera with Adobe
5. Software for PC and cable lets you attach cable to camera and turn it on with automatic download to your PC of new pictures. You can also go in and download older ones saved on the media card (CompactFlash)
6. I like taking 5-7 pictures for one BEST shot. I then go through and delete the ones that did not come out well and print the one that did!
7. Video capture is about 15 seconds with high resolution and plays well on the PC. Each file can be joined with Microsft Movie Player (XP) to create one long movie (AVI file) nd burned to a CD. You can view the movie on the camera too.
8. Good depth of field. Not a wide angle, but some elements are achieved
9. Viewing screen on the back is very good and wide
10. Upgrade to a 64 MB or 128 MB card - the 8 MB included card is not enough for big photos
11. Zoom is excellent. On highest zoon, you can't be too close or too dark. The focus will not work evertime, but taking a step back works.
12. Flash can be turned off for any shot
13. you can review the pictures on the camera one by one or by a small grid (I think like 9 pictures). You can even zoom in on the pix you took on the camera and move it around.

Color: great, accurate color when shooting outdoors and under the studio lighting. All in all though, the A40 produced unusually appealing color.

Exposure: The A40 did a great job with exposure, capturing great midtones both indoor and outside. A40's exposure system worked very well, but did show a tendency to lose highlight detail in very contrasty lighting conditions.

Sharpness: Image sharpness was good for a two-megapixel camera, with crisp details throughout the frame. Optical distortion was a bit better than average at the wide-angle lens setting.

Closeups: The A40 came in a bit below average in the macro category, capturing a rather large minimum area of 6.56 x 4.92 inches. Color, detail, and resolution were all great, however.

Night Shots: The A40 did unusually well for an entry-level camera in my low light shooting tests. Some of the lower light level shots had slightly soft focus, but results were good overall. The camera's noise reduction system did a reasonably good job of eliminating image noise.

Battery Life: Battery life on the A40 is very good. In its worst-case power consumption mode (capture mode with the LCD screen turned on), it should run about 3 1/2 hours on a freshly-charged set of high-capacity NiMH AA batteries. With the LCD screen off, it can run for over 20 hours straight. Playback mode run time should be about 5-6 hours. This is really excellent, but you'd better purchase a couple of sets of rechargeable batteries still holds.

Conclusion:

The A40 is a nicely-designed, stylish, functional camera that take great pictures. The A40 has a nice sharp lens, and excellent color rendition. The Movie capture mode makes the A40 great for recording short clips of special events, while the Stitch-Assist mode lets you capture expansive panoramic shots. The 2.0-megapixel CCD produces good image quality, with enough detail to print images as large as 8x10 inches. If you're looking for a good entry-level camera with a range of options and excellent picture quality, you need look no further than the A40.

Pros:...Very good photo quality...
-Easy to use in point-and-shoot or manual modes
-Excellent software bundle
-Supports external lenses, underwater case
-Solid Construction
-High quality lens, Software, CCD add up to great pictures.
-Lots of manual controls over exposure, f-stop, ISO etc.

-Continous shooting at 3 frames/sec.
-Built-in lens cover, so there's no worries about lens caps
-Very good manual (177 pags)

Cons:

-No rechargeable batteries included
-Sometimes slow shutter speed
-No uncompressed file format (TIFF or RAW) only saves as JPEG
-Macro mode not up to rest of the camera features
-Drains regular Alkalines fairly fast
-8MB memory won't be enough

...P>The Canon Powershot A40 is an excellent camera, especially for one at the entry-level digital camera price point ... This is the second digital camera I've owned,...P>The A40 is everything I had hoped for in a digital camera: good picture quality, USB connection, and an intuitive interface. The interface was especially good in contrast to the Olympus. Settings for resolution and compression level are separate, which is a major feature to me. The 3 available resolutions are 640x480, 1024x768, and 1600x1200. The jpeg compression levels are normal, fine, and superfine. Images at 1600x1200 and Superfine compression are quite nice indeed, with little, if any, jpeg artifacting.

Focusing is done through Canon's AiAF system, which (I guess) uses artificial intelligence to help focus the lens. If you use the LCD screen when taking your pictures, 3 boxes appear representing the focus points. When pressing the shutter half-way, the boxes turn green representing the part of the image that will have the focus. This is very handy as it's hard to tell what the camera is focusing on sometimes. However, this system does get annoying at times, such as when the green boxes choose to focus on something other than what you want! This usually requires you to make an adjustment to your angle or position. In general I am pretty pleased with the focusing on the A40. ...I was afraid that I was simply expecting too much for a camera at this price point, but the Canon has shown me otherwise.

Pictures with the A40 are sharpest in bright sunlight, as you would probably expect. Focusing is not quite as good in low light situations, but the AiAF is helpful in this regard. If none of the green boxes appear when you press the shutter button it's a sign that there's not enough light to get a good focus, and your image may come out blurry. There's an autofocus helper beam that's supposed to help the camera focus in low light, but it's so dim that I don't see how it can really be of any assistance. Indoors, pictures taken with the flash are pretty good, but sometimes the flash goes off outside where there is ample light, and the resulting image is quite dim. In these situations I've found it's usually best to disable the flash, though you might end up with a somewhat blurry image.

Colors on the A40 are bright and vivid. There are sites you can find with great sample pictures, and I would suggest everyone find some sample photos before making a decision on any digital camera. I don't notice much, if any, bleeding of colors,...The menu system is clean and intuitive. The font for the menus is easy to read, even in bright sunlight. There is an on/off button which in photo mode causes the lens to extend or retract, or in "play" mode causes the stored images to be displayed on the LCD screen. There's a mode wheel which allows you to select Play, Auto, Program, Manual, Panorama, and Movie mode. The movie mode allows you to record short (~15 seconds on the included 8 meg CF card) movies. Most digital cameras sold today have this "Feature," however the Canon is unique in that it has a built-in microphone, so you get sound with your movie as well as video. Most cameras have no mic, so you're left with video only.

One thing that was somewhat disappointing with the A40 was that it wasn't recognized as a Mass Storage Device when plugged into my Windows 2000 PC, which my Olympus was. However, this turned out to be a non-issue once I installed the A40's included software. Once the software is installed, you plug the camera into a USB port on your PC, set the camera to "play" mode, and turn it on. Canon's ZoomBrowser application then starts up, and prompts you to download all of the camera's new images (since the last time you synced, though you can set it to fetch all images, or just ones you've flagged) to your PC. On the included 8 meg card this takes less than 30 seconds when the card is full. Once the images have been transferred to my PC, I quit the ZoomBrowser app, so I can't really give you a decent review of the app itself. I prefer to do photo editing in photoshop.

The A40 takes 4 AA batteries, which are included. I've had the camera for over a week and taken ~200 pictures and am still using the set of batteries that came with the camera, so I would say it has pretty good battery life. As with any digital camera, I would recommend a set of NiMH rechargables if you're planning to use the camera with any frequency (and believe me, since you're not worrying about paying for film processing, you'll be using the camera a lot more -- I take pictures of the wall just because I *can*).

As I've stated above, the A40 ships with an 8 MB Compact Flash card. At the max resolution and best compression, this will hold only 8-12 images, so I plan on purchasing a 128 meg CF card. ... and it will save you lots of time running back and forth to the PC to transfer images, especially if you use a lower resolution or jpeg level -- my personal favorite is 1024 Superfine.

All in all, the Canon Powershot A40 is an excellent camera for the price, is more than suitable for beginners, and is even enough to satisfy a computer-geek (but photo-newbie) like me. While you can probably get better quality by spending more, the A40 is relatively inexpensive for such a quality device.

I purchased the Canon A40 about 4 days ago, and have taken a few hundred pictures with it so far. I bought it to replace my old Sony FD-73, which was only a 0.3 megapixel camera. I wanted better quality and more storage options (greater capacity), so I started shopping around for a good quality 2.0MP Camera on Amazon.

The picture quality is excellent. I noticed no chromatic abberation on any of the shots I took. The pictures were crisp and clear, the colors were vibrant, and the pictures were good whether taken indoors or outdoors. And, believe it or not, I'm still using the AA Alkaline batteries that came with the camera. Even after several hundred pictures, they are still working. I've read numerous reviews of cameras in this price range that drain batteries very quickly, I'm impressed that mine are still working.

I also tested the video mode of the camera. It seems to automatically stop the video after about 10 seconds, I'm not sure if that setting can be changed. The quality of the video was excellent and the audio quality was good, however the size of the video is something like 320x200 pixels (I don't remember precisely), which is quite small. The 10 second video used about 3.7MB of space on the video card. As everyone knows, the 8MB card that comes with it is useless. I threw it in the trash and bought a 256 SmartMedia card, which works great. Based on the size of the pictures I took, full quality pictures at 1600x1200 averaged about 950K, while low quality pictures at 640x480 averaged about 145K. Based on that, my 256MB card should hold about 270 pictures at the highest quality and 1700 pictures at the lowest quality.

I played around with the "Stitch" mode as well, which is supposed to help you paste together pictures into a panoramic shot. It was very helpful. Here's how it works: It reduces the viewscreen so you can see two shots at once. After you take the first picture, it puts it on the left side of the LCD view screen. When you're ready to take the 2nd picture, you can line up the shot with the previous picture, so they'll line up correctly when you paste them together with your PC graphics program. Supposedly, the camera automatically adjusts itself in Stitch mode so that the camera uses the exact same settings to try and keep the two pictures uniform. There seems to be no limit to how many pictures the camera will let you "stitch" together.

The camera also offers numerous manual settings for the professional photographer. You can manually adjust ISO speed, shutter speed, white balance, and many other features you would expect to find on a camera with a much higher price tag.

In sum, I'm very impressed with this little camera, and I think it is a great value for the price. In my opinion, 2.0MP is the perfect quality for a casual user, Cameras in this range seem to offer the best combination of value, price, and picture quality. I highly recommend it.

Good luck finding this camera, it always seems to be sold out on Amazon. I guess that's a good sign!

This is my first digital camera and I have been very intimidated about finally buying one, but I have always owned and loved my Canons, so this was an easy choice for me. I also read many reviews and this camera was at the top of the list in every category including durability. I love that this camera looks and feels like a normal camera. You can use the viewfinder just like the olden days. It is larger and has the heft of a camera, not tiny like some digital cameras.
Out of the box set up time was about 10 minutes. The instruction book begins at the beginning and is written in plain English with illustrations. No wonk-y mumbo-jumbo. Basically, you slap the batteries in, put the little memory card in its slot, turn it on and point and shoot. Auto focusing and flash make it SIMPLE!
I was in a quandry about megapixels. I wondered if 2.1 was too low for the pics to be sharp. A couple of years ago, that was the top of the line, now, 2.1 is prehistoric. I decided to go with the A40 and 2.1 as a learning experience because the price is so low and Canons are so great. I figured after a couple of years, I'd junk the A40 and get a super megapixel camera. WRONG! This is a keeper! The photos are absolutely beautiful and crisp, even up to 8"X10". The color is absolutely accurate! My dad is a Nikon snob and even he admitted that my Canon A40 did a much better job than his Nikon 2.1 megapixel!
You have the option of using the Auto mode, where the camera does everything but push its own button or you can use it like a conventional camera where you set the exposure, shutter speed, etc.
There are a lot of other settings to play with if you want to, like making the colors more vivid.
I did invest in a 256MG memory card because I read that the 8MG one the camera comes with doesn't hold many photos. I have shot 200 photos without a glitch or erasing any to free up memory space.
I think that this is the greatest value and quality in a digital camera for any level of user that anyone could want. If you've hesitated buying a digital camera, I encourage you to make this your first digital camera. I expect to keep this baby forever!

You should all know that Canon makes the best 2X Megapixel cameras in [that price] range. Above that range - I would buy Nikon or Fuji.

I was looking at: Canon S330, S200, A40 - in that order. I went to [2 different camera stores] for all my information and learned a lot. I threw out the S200 because of the 2X zoom rather than the 3x optical zoom of the A40 and S330. I looked at the S330 and A40 and went with the A40 since it was [less expensive] and the features the S330 had over the A40 was not enough for me to spend [that much] more. Here are the differences:

* The S330 is the ELPH model and smaller than the A40. The A40 sits in your hand better with the curve. The S330 was easy to drop and not any lighter.
* The A40 uses AA batteries. The S330 uses rechargebale Lithium ion batteries. I use rechargeables AA already. The S330 also comes with a charger and the A40 does not.
* Both view screens are the same on the back - 1.5 inches. Both can use AUTO, Manual, Macro, Portrait, and Landscape.
* Both have the same flash functions - red eye, off, auto.
* Both cameras can shoot 30 second movies with AUDIO.
* The S330 has the ability to set personal settings, like when you turn it self-timer - you can record yourself saying" Get Ready!". The A40 does not.
* I don't think the A40 lets you record AUDIO per picture like the S330 does. For example, the S330 you can record your memories of the photo while you take it. Not on the A40.
* Both have same software - it's very good for downloading. It uses USB to the PC (I have XP) and auto downloads new photos. A snap to set up.
* Both have same resolution - Large, Med, Small. Same Compression - Normal, Fine, SuperFine.
* Both come with 8 MB card - not enough - get a 64MB.
* Both come with all cords

Good luck. For me the voice controls and smallness were not worth [the extra money]. The A40 works great. The pictures are very clear, sharp, and easy to load into the PC.

If you're looking for a digital camera in the [moderate price]range, this is the one. I've done extensive research and no other comes close to the features and options that this camera offers. Bottom line is, you'll produce excellent photos with this camera. 2M Pixel is more than enough if all you're looking for is great pictures.
A few things you should get if you buy this camera..
1) Get a bigger compact flash card (128M will hold 140 pictures in the highest resolution, 200 in medium, 400 in low). I find that medium resolutin produces sufficient quality for 4 by 6 photos.
2) Definitely get NiMH rechargeable batteries and charger (8 batteries please.. 1 set for backup since camera requires 4 AA batteries)
3) Get an AC Adapter for transfering files and/or printing photos.

This camera has more features than any digital camera... However, it seems ALL canon powershot A40 has an out of focus problem in zoom mode at focal length 13.4mm in auto focus mode. (The second to largest zoom setting). At this focal length the camera will set focus fixed at distance of 66m (roughly 200 feet) no matter how far your intended objects are. This often causes out of focus problems.

Canon admits this problem and it says their new firmware would solve this problem. However many customer mentioned the only thing the new firmware does is remove the "distance" information from the jpeg exif info. And that hides the fact that the camera is still focusing at a fixed 66m at 13.4mm focal length.

I don't know if the firmware fix is really aimed at hiding the problem only. Anyway I hope Canon will make this issue public and give some detailed explanation to clear things up.