User reviews for Canon PowerShot A300: Digital Photography Review

Opinion: Refer to my post in Canon A310 reviews.

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Opinion: I had this camera for two years and I must say that is quite resistent. The image quality is great and its a perfect cam to daylight sports shots.

Problems: With low light it has a difficulty to focus.

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Opinion: Careful testing of this after a recent purchase for my daughter shows it to be a very capable little camera.

Obvious plus points compared with the competition - very good autofocus(including low-light illuminator), very well-exposed pictures with superb colour, optical viewinder is large and bright enough to be usable, LCD is sharper than many, ability to shoot films with audio at 640x480 is much better than most. Ability to set ISO at 50 and compression to extra-fine give best chance of highest quality images.

Minus points - lens is definitely built down to a price. Most of the image area is very sharp, but the extreme corners are obseravably (viewed at 1:1) less sharp than on many consumer digicams. This is unlikely to be a significant issue in real life, but it surprised me a bit. Macro performance is weaker than some/many. I didn't particularly like the design of some of the controls and menus - others are more intuitive. The plastic case feels rather less rigid than some others. The write time to card is slowish (about 3 seconds per highest quality image). And, of course, there is no optical zoom - and you won't want to use the digital one much.

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Opinion: Guess what??? I was so amazed by this camera.
This is my first digital camera,I bought it 5 months ago and I was so satisfied with it.
I've shooted hundreds of pictures, from macros to sceneries.
I'm considering to upgrade it to Canon S50 or Canon A80.
I swear, you'll not gonna regret it.
See my pictures gallery @: http://tomyj-a300.fotopic.net

Problems: No optical zoom, that's the only problem for me.
But it's worth the money for 3.2 MP digital camera.
Sorry for my English :-)

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Opinion: The camera is loaded with features that I've never had before which means I can do more with it. I had heard that this camera had a slow shutter time but I think that the reviews I had read on this camera where wrong. The delay is due to the auto phocus feature. I have always heard that if all else fails read the instructions. This camera is A-1 for me.

Problems: The only problem I encountered was battery life (alkaline)remedy is rechargable or Lithium batteries

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Opinion: I bought this camera from Dell for my daughter for Christmas for US$169 including 2-day shipping. All in all, a superb value. Super easy to use, and the image quality is excellent, despite the fact that there is no optical zoom. The only gripe is that it eats AA batteries like crazy, but we're looking into rechargables. Bottom line: highly recommended for the money.

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Opinion: For the size and price I think Canon has a winner. This is my third digital (first Canon) and ease of operation is not one of its qualities. Images are good. Battery life could be better but what can one expect from AA batteries.
Lack of a Zoom feature may be overcome by holding the camera in the face of a subject to get a 'head' shot- - not very candid! Use the LCD to frame shots for the view finder ahows only about 80%.

Problems: I cannot get the camera into the manual mode no matter what I try.
Also cannot actuate the AiAF icon to know what focus mode the camera is in.
Please help me try to understand the operation by sending your response to my thread 'A 300 Problems' in Canon Talk forum.- - the instruction manual seems to be vauge on these points.

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Opinion: This is a fantastic little pocketable camera, as the owner of a PowerShot G2 I was looking for something small to take out for less challenging snaps and the A300 certainly doesn't disappoint.

The image quality of this camera is excellent. I went on a recent trip to the Snowdonia National Park and took a selection of photos side by side with my G2 and when taking comparable shots (i.e. no zoom) the difference in quality isn't that significant.

For macro shots I would actually say that the A300 gives a slightly better quality picture, it doesn't seem to suffer the same distortion of the G2's lens on very close subject. But it's fair to say the differences here are small and very subjective.

My PowerShot A300 replaced a Fuji FinePix 2200 which was only 2.1Mpixel and was very dependent on its flash (anything short of bright sunlight and you'd find the flash kicking in). It also took 4x AA batteries and the A300 can take the same amount of pictures on only 2x AA cells which makes it much lighter and it's smaller too.

Being used to a heavier PowerShot G2 means that I find the A300 a little too lightweight in some circumstances as it has little inertia to keep it steady. I occasionally use it with a little pocket tripod to keep it still, especially if I'm playing with manual settings or asking it to do a longer exposure.

Another minor point is that on the A300 the lens is on the same axis as the tripod mount. They didn't even manage this on my G2 (I would guess so you can change batteries without detatching the tripod).

In short the A300 is a great little camera and I'd heartily recommend it to anyone for simple snap photography. It has a reasonable level of manual control for a relatively basic camera and would suit anyone considering a simple no-frills digital camera.

Problems: My first A300 was faulty, it kept losing it's time and date (despite replacing the backup battery) but in the short time I had it I learned that this is a camera which needs a soft case.

This camera is made of relatively fragile plastic, if you drop it the paint scratches very easily and the corners seem to become scuffed quite quickly (perhaps I'm just not careful enough). I certainly had to watch what was in my pocket because a few coins would scratch it in a very short time and keys would wreak havoc on the flimsy silver paint.

On one occasion my daughter dropped my A300 and the battery/CF card door popped open and the batteries shot out because the battery door had fallen off entirely (all fortunately repairable). Now bearing in mind my daughter is only 2 years old it didn't fall very far to sucumb to this fate.

I have now invested in an Oyster case for it which fits nicely on my belt so it's suffering much less wear and tear now.

For this reason I've given it only 2 for build quality, but even with this limitation it is an excellent little camera.

This camera eats alkaline batteries at fair rate. The batteries supplied with the camera took only ten consecutive shots before the battery indicator lit up, so rechargeables are the order of the day. I have four NiMH 2000mAh AA batteries (two in the camera and two spares) and can easily fill a 256Mb CF card on a single pair.

The flash cycling time is quite poor, the first charge of the flash can take a couple of seconds. Subsequent shots don't seem to take as long but this can mean missing a 'moment' on occasions.

Even taking these shortcomings into consideration I would still buy one of these again as it does it's job excellently and the picture quality is brilliant for such a cheap camera.

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Opinion: I did quite a bit of research before buying my second digital camera (this one) and I am extremely happy with what I got. This nifty little camera is awesome with a lot of features including the same movie/sound features found in the a70 (which is $200 more expensive). Between the two I believe this one offers more for your buck as the a70 has perhaps slightly better picture quality and a couple of additional features but I wouldn't pay the extra $200 for it!! This camera kills the competition including several models above it. I challenge anyone to find a better camera than this one at this price!!

Problems: The interface takes a little while to get used to but I guess that's what the manual is there for. And the battery casing is a little hard to open but these little niggles are very slight. Overall this camera is the best 3.2 MP camera under $500(AU) or $250(US)

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