Canon PowerShot A495

Canon’s latest entry-level compact is a stylish little number. It’s been designed to be as intuitive and simple to use as possible, yet with its large image sensor, surprisingly good image quality and an array of auto shooting modes, it offers an appealing overall package for the money.

The Canon PowerShot A495 is a nice looking camera with a well thought out and ergonomic design that feels good in the hand. It’s also well built and sturdy considering its entry-level price. You can pick it up in three different colours to suit: red, blue or the silver and black combo. There’s a 10 megapixel sensor at the heart of the A495, a modest 3.3x optical zoom and support for Canon’s DIGIC III image processing engine. One area that leaves us a little wanting is the 2.5-inch LCD that only has a 115k pixel resolution. This is really the first and only sign of the entry-level price tag impacting on an otherwise decent specification. There is also no optical viewfinder present, so you’ll have to use the LCD for framing up shots – something becoming increasingly common in the entry level sector.

We mentioned this camera has been designed to be easy to use, the Smart Auto shoot modes automatically detects the optimal settings from 18 reference points in an effort to get the best shooting conditions with little effort from the end user. Another interesting option is the FaceSelf Timer, which allows you to setup a group shot on a timer and wait until it recognise that another face has entered the shot before taking the snap – pretty cool. While some of the above auto options do limit the camera’s flexibility, they work well and will suit casual users looking to get good quality shots without having to get too technical in the options menus.

General performance should be difficult to fault and image quality is reported to be excellent, especially in outdoor scenes where it produces vivid colours and great brightness levels. Chromatic aberrations are said to be minimal and the 3.3x zoom lens – while certainly not that wide by today’s standards – should still useable for landscape shots.

The Canon PowerShot A495 is the ideal choice for someone looking for good image quality in a simplistic package. It should produce very good pictures in almost all situations and most importantly it’s designed to be easy to use, so shouldn’t require fiddling around with. The end result is an ideal compact for casual users then, and a good one at that.