Canon PowerShot A400

There are tons of digicams available below 10k, but most of them are from brands that you don't know, or don't want to buy cameras from. Brands like O'Rite or Umax aren't exactly what I'd go looking for when I want to buy a camera. Most good brands were pretty expensive, and those that weren't lacked basic features like optical zoom or were simply too low in terms of megapixels. Canon's PowerShot A400 is an entry level digital camera that aims to squash those notions that there's no such thing as a "cheap good-brand digital camer" on the market. The A400 is Cannon's entry level offering and is a major upgrade to the A310, Cannon's previous entry level offering. The camera features a 2.2X optical zoom lens instead of the old fixed focal length lens that it had in its older offerings. The A400, priced at about RS. 12,995 MRP (Rs. 8,000 SRP or 9,000 with a 128MB card), is the best way that anyone can get their hands on a good, robust digital camera.





Ergonomics

The A400 is the type of camera that would come between compact and midsize. Another noteworthy feature is the build quality, which seems to be quite good. The camera is made of a combination of metal and plastic. The A400 is 10.7cm wide, 5.34cm high and 3.68cm and the camera weighs 165 grams. The controls are easily accessible. The camera comes in four colours - Silver, Sky Blue, Lime Green and Sunset Gold.





Features

The 3.2 megapixel camera has an "Auto" mode, based on Cannon's iSAPS technology. Basically, iSAPS, allows the to analyze a particular scene and automatically select the ideal camera setting to best capture a scene. It has 9 (AiAF) auto-focusing points, to ensure that your subject will always be in focus - regardless of its position in the viewfinder. An auto-assist beam is also helps in dark scenarios.

An interesting feature that must be mentioned is that when you take a picture, a histogram is nice enough to tell you if the image you just captured is over or under exposed so that a re-shoot can be done if required. It also comes with 8 special scene modes to automatically adjust the camera settings for shooting in environments like foliage, snow, beach, fireworks, indoor, night, portrait and underwater scenes. The camera is also equipped with 2.2x optical and 3.2x digital zoom so as to get detailed close up photographs. Available as an accessory, users can buy the underwater case, which will comes in very handy at those diving vacations, that you just love taking. It can go up to 40 metres deep in the sea.

Apart from plain pictures, the camera also allows you to take 3-minute movie clips, complete with sound, on the fly. A built-in editing feature helps in deleting unwanted scenes on the spot. You can print still images and scenes from the movie clip directly to Canon's direct photo printers or any brand of PictBridge printers. The camera also has a special postcard print mode, which guides you through a proper composure of your image according to the printing area (vertical/horizontal ratio of 3:2).

The PowerShot A400, like all its predecessors, comes with a DIGIC imaging-processing chip to produce sharp images. The camera uses normal AA batteries which means that you don't have to lug around a special charger, though rechargeable AAs would be your best bet (which come with their own charger).


Performance

The images turned out quite "smooth". Colors seemed both accurate and saturated. The Powershot A400 did well in the macro test as well. The A400 is not a good choice, if you intend on taking long exposures. The slowest shutter speed on the camera is one second and that just doesn't cut it for shots like this. The A400 also showed good results in the flash test, with just a bit of redeye and flash reflection.

Overall the photo quality on the PowerShot A400 is pretty good, at least I didn't have any problems with it. Color, exposure, and sharpness all earn good marks. However, one issue that must be addressed is that details can sometimes be a little fuzzy, and on some straight line photographs you may notice a little distortion around the edges. But, even with this issue, the photos look quite good for a camera with this price.

Conclusion

The CanonPowerShot A400 is available for Rs. 12,995 MRP and around Rs. 8000 SRP - which is great value for money. Its picture quality is very good, and set of features including 2.2x optical zoom and various modes along with movie capture etc. will ensure that you never feel disappointed about the money you spend on it. Buy it!




Have an opinion on this product?Disagree with the review? Send in your experiences, opinions, rants, raves,and death threats to the reviewer. We love attention!