Digital Cameras Specialty Digital Cameras

Has anyone besides me noticed that the quality of digital camera seems to be getting worse over time? canon (and others) seem be putting out a lot of low quality cameras in the under $200 price range. It's almost beginning to feel as if the definition of disposable camera has changed to any camera priced under $200. Low resolution LCDs, underpowered, image noise, and really slow flash recharge times seem to plague many digitals in this price range. If your considering buying a canon Powershot A560 Digital Camera, you may want to be aware of its shortcomings.

The LCD on the A560 leaves plenty of room for improvement, especially when it comes to resolution and color reproduction. If your indoors and just looking to frame your subjects then the LCD is adequate. Outdoors can be problematic. The LCD is far too grainy to help with focusing your picture, and unless your shooting on a cloudy day, this PowerShots LCD will be pretty washed out. Fortunately, canon had the sense to include an optical viewfinder with the A560. It gives you a better option for those sunny days.

Battery consumption is pretty steep with this camera. Turning off the LCD will help, but is a nuisance. In their sales material, canon likes to suggest that the fact the PowerShot A560 uses AA batteries is a good thing because you can get them anywhere. I think what they really meant to say was that it's a good thing you can get AA batteries anywhere, because your going to need to buy a lot of them. I'm sure the battery companies don't mind. The first company to come up with a reliable and low power consumption solar powered digital camera is going to make a fortune. And probably put the Energizer bunny on the unemployment line.

The other thing that seems to frustrate many customer of the A560, is that it's kind of an in between camera. It's not really an ultra-compact, so it's difficult to slide into small places like your pants pocket to take with you anywhere. Conversely, it's also at the bottom of the compact range price wise, so it appeals to many in the ultra-compact demographic. canon needs to do a better job of positioning this camera in the marketplace to avoid so much buyers remorse.

I'd have to say, that the low build quality, and lack of many features makes the PowerShot A560 a pretty disposable camera. Although for me, anything I spend 100 - 150 dollars on, I don't want to be throwing away in a year or so. More concerns I and others have had with the canon A560 include:

- flash controls are disorganized and difficult to remember

- manual focus is not available

- taking flash pictures results in long wait times between pictures

- when playing back videos, there is no sound

- image editing features are quite limited

For this price range, you can't expect much in the way of a quality digital camera these days. For something the kids are going to abuse, and forget about in a few months, the A560 may be fine. If your looking for something to capture special family moments and events for the scrapbook, then it's worth saving up another one or two hundred dollars and getting a real feature rich camera.