Owners Opinion:
Canon PowerShot A40 (phil, 11 May 02)
 1.9 million effective pixels 35 mm - 105 mm (3x) zoom | phil's Rating
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OpinionI just returned my A40. The image quality is great when the camera focuses correctly. But if youre not outdoors or using studio lights, good luck with that. I turned on all the lights in my living room / dining room(300 watt halogen floor lamp, overhead halogens, incadescent lamp on end table, and halogen track lights) and still the camera couldnt focus reliably. Half the time, it beeps once, telling me it cant focus. I would adjust the aim for more contrast to help the autofocus out until i got the double beep of approval. But even then, I got well focused shots only about 50% of the time. I experimented with macro mode, portrait mode, landscape mode, and "regular" mode, but the focus problem remained. I was not using the zoom on these test shots. Finally after about 150 test shots of different things in my living room, I took the camera to work to see how it did with the office lighting. Again, it took a lot of persistance to get the double beep which signifies the camera is focusing ok, and even then, the shots came out out of focus! I was fortunate to convice Best Buy that the camera was defective, otherwise I would have been out 45 bucks! (15% restocking fee!).To put my comments in perspective, I should say that while I am new to digital cameras, I am not at all a newbie to photography. I know my Minolta SLR like the back of my hand, and I understand how autofocus systems need contrast in the scene to function. (You can see my work at members.aol.com/freedog1000/florida.htm . Those shots were NOT taken with a digital camera.) I dont recommend the A40 unless you will only be using it for outdoor still photograpy or with superbright studio lighting. | ||||
ProblemsNeeds very bright light to focus reliably. |
