My first Cannon!!
Written: Aug 09 '04
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Durability: |
 |
|
| Battery Life: |
 |
|
| Photo Quality: |
 |
|
| Shutter Lag |
|
|
|
Pros: Good for beginners! It's for those who don't what to pay too much.
Cons: Need Nimh batteries and charger,( or you will waste lots of money on batteries)
The Bottom Line: Get it, but you have to get a charger as well.....
Don't expect you can zoom with this camera!
|
|
|
| stse's Full Review: Canon PowerShot A300 Digital Camera |
My little history of why I want digital
When the era of digital camera began, film camera was beginning to fade away. I remember way back when I had to buy film to develop my film. I wanted to save some money and I sent 2 rolls to the mail order developing place. Most of the times, I got it okay. However, one time, the mail order film center told me that they lost my films. All they could do was to pay me back 2 rolls of films free. All my memory was gone then!
From then on, I never wanted to take any of rolls of films to mail order film center. I didn't give up film camera then until 9/11. You may ask, what does it have to do with 9/11?? I used to work in New York. New York City is full of stores that can develop your film. Ever since I moved to Jersey and work in New Jersey now, I found less and less store that can provide that kind of quick service. Well, except maybe Walmart; however, the price seems to be higher than in New York. Then I realize one thing, walmart develops digital camera films too! Although I never tried that, I appreciated the high tech very much. I then gave up my film camera, plus my film camera was broken for some reason. What a good excuse for me to go high tech!
Digital vs Film
The advantage of Digital cameras are the following.
1. What you see and what you get. You will never get out of focus picture. Remember the old fashioned camera, you have to close one eye and look at the viewer. Look no more on digitals! All of them are designed for you to see the pictures as if you have them printed/developed out. You can
also zoom in to see the detail of the picture you take.
2. Easy to store. Instead of storing all the negatives, all you need is a computer (if you have a CD Writer, you can write to a Cd). I used to take lots of picture in my life time, and most of the negatives are stored all over. Some of them I don't even know where they are. Even I could find them, if I want a particular picture in certain year, I will have to look my head up with with the negatives and search the ones I want. Maybe at the end of searching, I will end up searching for doctor to heal my stiff neck. Having digital photos is a total different situation, it is stored in computer or disk. It goes by date and you can catalogize whatever you want. Or you can even make web pages out of them. We are now living in 21 century, and almost everything is computerized now. Why not taking pictures!
3. Instant output. . It started with mail order photos, and it would take a week and you pictures will be right in your mail box. Then, go to the store directly, and 2 or 3 days we should get our pictures. Not much later, we could even get in even 1 hour photo. I was amazed when they had 30 minutes photos in the 90s. However, as the technology goes higher, people tend to get impatience. I am one of them. We saw the picture right away in instant seconds. We can view it right in the digital camera. If we want to print it out, all we need to get is a color printer and some photo papers. We pick whatever we want. There is no need to waste money on pictures we don't want. And the result of digital pictures are as good as film developed pictures. Besides, if you want, you can even go to walmart or any photo store, they can develop the pictures for you right there.
Why Canon powershot a300
1. Price. At about hundred and 20 dollars, you can enjoy the high tech result. There are many digital cameras out there, ranging from lower 70 dollars to $700 dollars. The lowest one will give you the worst resolution, and the most expensive ones will give you the feature you may never use. If you just want to experience what digital camera is like, this one is for you. Beginners will love it!
what does it come with???
It comes with a 2 AA alkaline batteries (which is not a good idea.. I will explain down below), and a 16 mb CF or memory card, some software for you pc, a usb connector to your pc.
2. Size. With the size of a palm, you can bring this camera everywhere you go. When it comes to size, personally I don't prefer a bigger nor a smaller camera. If the camera is too small, you may drop it or lose it easily. If the camera is too big, it will be on you way whenever you need it. The one is just the right size!
3. Quality. You will have a 3 mega pixels picture. And you can have many kind of resolution to choose from, from 640x840 1024x768, 1600x1200 to 2048x1536. (Of course, the larger the resolution the more memory it will consume your memory card. However, the minimum resolution will be more than enough. Besides, you need to have a good color printer to print it out though. )
When you set it for auto focus, almost all your pictures will come out perfectly. So far, none of my pictures come out blurry. That's the beauty of this digital camera. I will not have to worry about out of focus pictures.
4. Instruction display. It is quite simple. All you have to do is press the either "up", "down", "right", "left" button, then it will bring you to either auto light, auto focus, view next picture and so on. It's quite user friendly.
5. Additional feature - You can actually use it as a camcorder. However, I don't suggest you to use that feature. It's kind of memory consuming. And I don't think it is needed because it is a digital camera, not camcorder.
6. Software for your pc. It comes a usb cable that allows you connects to your pc. So you can save your pictures instantly. You can also view, print your picture with you likings. It's quite simple and you do not need a book to learn about it. The software is one of the best part I like about this camera.
Bad things about this Camera
1. Batteries. - When I bought it, it came with 2 Alkaline batteries. That's misconception to many people who don't know digital camera. At first, I took about 8 shots and the batteries went dead. I thought the camera stinks. Then, I did some research and realized that Camera like that requires nh-mh batteries, or it won't last too long.
2. Mode switching - Sometimes, I found mode switching a bit tedious. It says you press the power-on button and it will go to the view mode, press again, it will go to picture ready mode. However, sometimes, it does not work. The way to trick is, turn it off, then open the len cover, it automatically goes to the picture-ready mode.
3. Unnecessary component - I found the video mode unnecessary. There is a button you switch, it will then make your pictures (frame of pics) video. Who would want it from a digital camera? It requires lots of CF memory card spaces
4. No optical zoom. The zoom feature it has is not enough if you expect to use this in a concert or take picture from a far place.
In conclusion
If you have a computer with usb port, and you want to have nice quality pictures without spending too much.
This digital camera is for you. Remember, you need to have nihm batteries, charger. You will have to spend a little more on those accessories. This is a great digital camera for beginner. I recommend it!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 120
This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Fool-Proof for Absolute Beginners
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
stse
|
|
Location: New Jersey
Reviews written: 108
Trusted by: 27 members
About Me:
Life is full of opinions.... ! What's yours? And Don't forget to rate my reviews!!
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.