Canon PowerShot A40

I've been using the Canon Powershot A40 digital camera for 3 years. The picture quality is excellent, but it eats batteries - rechargeables are a must. It's rugged, having survived a few low level drops.

The camera has the features most people want i.e. point and shoot, and a flash.

The auto focus is sometimes painfully slow, perhaps even up to 10 seconds, worse in bad lighting, but this is an old camera now.

It may now be outdated, but it has proved to be reliable and very useful. I would buy a Canon again.

Bought my Canon PowerShot A40 a year ago in Hong Kong. Best price as they were phasing-out the 2.1 MegaPixel digital cameras already (feb 2003). Added a Muse 128MB Compact Flash Card for good measure. Great value for money. Only problem I encountered was the canon software got corrupted for an unknown reason. Had to reinstall it. Other than that, a fine choice for ones who are just open to having an easy-to-use no nonsense digital camera.

Bought the camera over a year ago now. Was well priced - I paid £200 but obviously now the A60 or even A70 would be the go. The camera was easy to get to use in Auto modes and even the manual options can be quite easily learned. The camera takes great photos- as good as many 3 meg cameras. And it can take great night shots too which the previous model could not. Good battery life. The only annoying thing is the zoom control which seems to have a mind of its own. Hard to make sublte changes to the zoom. Also the viewfinder is inaccurate. I find that you get a lot more on the top of the picture than it shows. I would certainly buy another Canon but would go for the A70 now.

Good quality camera which shoots above what the 2 megapixel resoultion would suggest. The quality easily compares with our last couple of 35mm cameras (sub £150 pentax and a samsung).

The menus take a bit of getting used to but once you have had a play they gradually become intuitive. Other than that it is point and shoot.

As I suppose is the standard these days you can alter the resolution and compression. The fine setting is OK but pretty 'snapshot', the superfine and uncompressed setting are very respectable and their size isnt a consideration if you plump for a bigger memory card.

We got a 8mb card with it but have replaced it with a 256 mb one as they are so cheap now.

You can take about 30 seconds of video with the camera which is a fun additon but there are a couple of limitations . The exposure takes a second to catch up and you are limited to 30 seconds regardless of your memory card size - although you can just take another 30s movie once the camera has taken a few seconds to process the first footage.

Camera and parameters can also be controlled from computer so time lapse, tints , exposure settings, artificial light compensation etc can be fiddled about with. You can also hook it up to TV using cable supplied. In general software is very easy to use.

It did not come with a mains adapter ( you would only need it if you kept it powered up and attached to you computer for extended period). The battery life is fairly good ( takes 4 AA batteries) We added rechargeable lithium batteries so that we could mess about to our hearts content.

Overall a good replacement for a standard 35mm camera. Photos come out very well and if they are developed well (Boots are fairly good - they download photos from your memory card and give it straight back) they are comparable.

This camera is being replaced so if you see any for below £200 its a worthwhile purchase.

I am very happy with my Canon camera - it is well worth the £250 I paid for it.

On automatic mode images in bright sunlight can be slightly overexposed. Also, the colours are slightly washed out on auto, but fine when you manually adjust the white balance. These are my only 2 gripes.

It's a very responsive and able camera, with an excellent macro facility. It uses standard compact flash cards, not like Fuji where you are forced to buy their proprietary XD cards at great expense.

Battery life is good (I used it all weekend on the same alkaline batteries), but if you were on a 2 week holiday using it moderately, I would say you need at least 3 sets of batteries to be sure you're not caught out. It works fine on rechargeable Ni-Cad or Ni-MH cells though.

Image quality is fantastic, just as good as any top-end 35mm compact camera, and if you buy a 128MB memory card you can store 130 pictures on top resolution (1600X1200) or 275 on medium (1024X768).

It has the point and shoot ease of a compact, with the versatility and features of an SLR.

It it great for novice and professional users alike, especially as the front bezel is removable for fitting a close-up or telescopic lens.

The video clip function is fair to good, especially as it includes audio, but limited in length.

I don't know how the A40 compares to other 2mp cameras out there, but I know I am very satisfied with my mine and don't regret buying this model for a second.

I tried several cameras before finding out that this camera is the best 2MP option.

If you are just an average user you will find it very easy to use. but if you want to be creative and use some of the knowledge acquired in your last photographic course.. you have plenty of options to do it.

The quality is amazing compared to even 3MP models and more expensive ones.

One of the best features is the use of AA batteries. As simply as that, you can be in the middle of nowhere and always find a couple of AA batteries to take you out of the proble, and with rechargable batteries you can take more than 100 pics without recharging again.

It is fantastic.

I bought the A40 after having a Powershot S10. While the A40 has many more features and short video capability, it is a clumsy and poorly configured camera. To add insult, the unit was faulty causing: over and under exposure of all pics. Canon now repairing under warranty - but I would prefer to let them keep it. Poor show Canon ! Spend some money on ergonomic specialists (people with common sense) next time, before producing such a product. No points on this one.

I will never buy another film again. Great pics even blown up to A4. The software gets better pics from 2M pixels CF other cameras using 3 or 4M. Photo stitch is flawless. Very easy for those who just want to point and shoot to get great results + control for those who want to do their own thing. The size of supplied card is not an issue with 128Mb cards a < £40. If you want a point and shoot camera - buy this one. If you want a camara which you control buy this one.

I love the fact that it is not a camera where you buy and get stuck with no add-ons or accessories to enhance the photographic experience. You can add wide or telephoto lenses, use an underwater case to take pictures while swimming. Pictures are sharp, colours true to detail and contrast is balanced. However, when taking shots indoor under tungsten light, you gotta fiddle with the white balance to prevent shots getting a yellow overcast.

When assessing any sort of camera, the only thing that really matters is the end result. The Canon Powershot A40 has many advanced features which are designed to get the perfect result: spot metering, variable ISO speed from 50 - 400, several white balance settings, several 'photo effect' settings, and more. Unfortunately, when looking at the final prints, it is still pretty obvious that they have come out of a digital camera. When taking indoor photos, the subject must be within the ideal range of the flash or the picture may come out underexposed, or may have poor contrasting. However, I must say that in good lighting conditions, the quality of my pictures has been exceptional.

Since I was on a tight budget, and I only intend to create prints at 6 X 4", I figured that a 2 megapixel camera would be fine. Many people are recommending 3 megapixels as a minimum and I note that 3 and 4 megapixel models are becoming very affordable. However, I would rather have a 2 megapixel camera with good optical hardware than a 3 or 4 megapixel model which produces rubbish.

The A40 has two main shooting modes: manual, automatic and program. My photography skills are very amateurish, and I prefer to stay away from the manual setting. However, using the 'program' setting allows a semi-automatic form of operation. Basically, it configures camera's computer to set the aperture and shutter speed, but allows the user to configure any other particular setting to automatic, or to a specific setting. Whilst the shutter speed in this mode is set automatically, there is an 'exposure compensation' setting which allows you to force the camera to deviate from its perceived ideal shutter speed if necessary.

It is a pity that the A40 only ships with an 8mb memory card (at a guess, this would allow 10 - 12 shots at best resolution), but this seems to be standard on most digital cameras. It does come with an attractive carry case, wrist strap, and an instruction manual which is very comprehensive and easy to follow.

The A40 is a bit bulkier than many other models in this price bracket, but I don't find this to be a problem. The battery life (running on 4 NiMH AAs) appears to be very pleasing but, like all cameras, battery consumption will vary depending on usage patterns. The 3x optical zoom featured on this model works very well. In general, if you don't want to spend too much money, but you want something reasonably professional, then the A40 is a great choice.