Canon PowerShot A80 Review

Overall Rating

Robustly made, image quality, excellent panorama stitch software, easy to use in auto mode, reviewing on display excellent, battery life.

Shutter delay, complexity, need to read the manual for optimum results, size, weight. Sky may be washed out.

This Canon PowerShot A80 digital camera is well made, though is slightly heavier and larger than some competitors. The image quality is generally excellent. In auto mode it gives generally very good results, though for some applications better results are obtainable by some of the other settings. For example, close ups of faces can be brought into sharper focus, though the interface is slightly cumbersome. Some users prefer to use the viewfinder, which means that the display can be switched off to save battery life. The display swivels and tilts.

When taking pictures out of doors sometimes the sky loses detail. Battery life is good. The panorama stitch mode is useful, and works well with the provided software. This is very good, though it might have been better if it also worked right to left - it's optimised for left to right, and in landscape mode.

Like many other cameras in its price range, shutter delay is a problem for action shots. This is a weakness - if you're looking for a camera for action shots you may need to pay considerably more.

There is a movie facility, though this has lower resolution than on the A70. It also records sounds, and there's a memo feature as well.

This camera works very well out of the box, though it takes time to read the whole manual. Just set it on Auto to start, and most of the time it'll work fine. When you feel able to cope with exerting more control you can use the manual, or manually assisted settings, to over-ride aperture, shutter speed, light metering etc.

There are also a couple of custom settings, so that you can save your favourite settings.

Pictures may need little modification for best results, though sometimes can be improved by some additional digital editing. There is a great deal of detail in many images, which offers additional scope for improvement afterwards. Images can be cropped in several different ways.

The memory card supplied (32Mbytes) is on the small side. Using a 256 Mbyte card allows hundreds of shots, even in the highest resolution and the highest quality JPEG settings.

An excellent camera for the money.

Members' Comments ondave2002's Review

• Richard Carmichael on 12th Feb 2004

  The Canon A80 is an excellent camera, I agree with what has been said about it in general.As my background in photography stretches back over 40 years the A80 was my first step on the digital ladder. As an existing Canon EOS user I found the A80 so easy to use, as for the time delay in taking action shots, this was quickly mastered by pre focusing and holding the shutter button halfway down, pressing it only at the point of action you wish to capture. After a bit of practice I very rarely miss the action at my local Rugby ground. Well done Canon.