Canon PowerShot A620

Opinion: I had this camera for years. Switched to this camera that took AA batteries after a trip to Hawaii when the charging cradle for my last camera broke. First trip there and only one full battery cycle!!! Never worried about that with this camera.

Image quality is awesome. I've taken some beauties with this guy and gotten some nice large prints out of them. Swivel screen was a novelty of it's day, now more common but it's fantastic to use. So easy to place the camera on the ground and up high for creative shooting angles. Speaking of creative, there are also a bunch of creative edits this camera will do like the color swap, selective color modes (showing only the color you select leaving everything else B&W), and many others you'd normally have to do in PS.

A workable zoom range. Easy menu system, like all canons. Fantastic macro that lets you get down to 1cm away! Also love the full manual ability, Tv, Av, and customs. This was a perfect learner camera for me to get to know how all those operations work. I took it everywhere with me, this was before the days of the 'rugged' cameras. So it went to the mountain, kayaking, hiking, everywhere. So it took some abuse too. Dropped in snow, straight to hard ground etc. quite a few times without incident. Unfortunately it took one drop too many a couple years ago and the shutter button popped off. Everything it the camera still works, just no shutter release :( It was going to cost more to fix than replace. It was time to graduate to a DSLR anyway.

Opinion: fantastic image quality.

Opinion: Very good camera, I still prefer it against A630 which I own too, because the images are cleaner (7MP on big sensor: 1/1.8", close to G series size, but old generation indeed) and there are no blow lights.
I use it for easy photo when I don"t take the 450D with his lenses. The bigger advantage is the tilt/swivel LCD.

Opinion: Four years and 35,000 pics later, the A620 keeps going. IQ is very good, live view practical, the swiveling LCD is also hughly practical, macro excellent. Used it underwater with case with very good results. Dropped it many times without a problem. I've had 1DsMKII and L lenses but the A620 goes eveywhere. Really, a great success.

Opinion: I've had this a few years and I must say it still holds up pretty well.

The rotatable screen is very handy. would be nice if it was bigger, but a feature that I wish Canon would put in the G series. the bulge to accomodate the 4 AA batteries means it's very nice to hold

Image quality is generally very good an excellent in macro mode for a compact.

I compared it to a colleagues LX3 and image quality held up surprisingly well.

Opinion: This camera saw some hard use for a couple of years before I finally upgraded to an XSi, but I still pull it out on the days when conditions are iffy or I don't want to carry the SLR. It's a great camera - not the lightest or most compact, but the battery life is excellent (I have never once had the batteries die on me, even when I was backpacking in Europe and taking hundreds of shots a day!) and the image quality is surprisngly good. The shots I take with my A620 are still often sharper than my XSi with kit lens, particularly in macro mode. It's very capable of nice bokeh in the OOF areas, too. I usually do some sharpening and levels editing in PP'ing, but otherwise I typically like the JPEGs I get off the camera. Prints look excellent in 5x7, I haven't tried printing larger but I would think you could get a good 8x10 from most shots.

Opinion: Good quality pictures in full light. Flash a problem with red eye and focus.

Opinion: Good camera that takes very nice and clear images and movies.

Opinion: AWESOME! I own many thousands of dollars worth of lenses for my Canon 20D, but when I have to decide which camera to take - my 620 or 20D, I usally grab the 620 because oz for oz, I get the best results! Exposure is perfect every time - it never gets fooled. Always sharp images (and I am super fussy after being a photographer since the early 70's) and really the only thing the 20D has over this is the really clean extended 3200 ISO so I can shoot indoors without flash. I can do it with the 620 and even have the manula WB, but you'd better be up against a wall or on a tripod and of course there is a littlemore grain - but you can't even compare the 2, they are in totally different categories. Carry her in your purse or shirt-pocket and get breathtaking images that stand up to the very best D-SLR's out there. Canon really hit a sweet spot with this one. I have had mine since Jan 2006.