Canon Powershot A560

Canon’s A500 series of digital cameras have been the easiest to recommend for the budget user. Though they’ve never been so hot on the looks department, their features and performance have been the biggest selling factor in the series. But does the new Canon A560 really match up to the standards its predecessors have set? Let’s find out.

Build
None of the cameras in the A500 series were very good looking, and the trend continues with this one too. Remarkably plain silver finish with a slightly darker-colored hand grip rule is what you’ll get to see on first contact. In fact, it’s the dark grip that separates its look from the cheaper Canon Powershot A550.

At 91x64x43 mm the A560 isn’t too bulky for a compact camera, and may just about even fit in a trouser pocket. It will look odd, but it will fit. The best way to carry it around would be using one of the camera pouches you get in the market. The two AA batteries add up to a total weight of 205 g.

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The back of the camera is dominated by the 2.5 inch TFT display along with all the functional buttons placed on the right for easy single handed operation. It also has an optical viewfinder, a feature I sorely miss on a lot of consumer camera models these days. The optical viewfinder can be your best friend when you’re trying to save up on batteries or when everything is a bit too dark for your camera’s LCD to legibly display anything.

It’s pretty obvious that the camera was built keeping functionality a bigger priority over looks and eye candy, which is what counts ultimately.
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Features
The A560 boasts a resolution of 7.1 megapixels, enough for any casual user. The 4x optical zoom (35 mm -140 mm) is a joy to see especially considering that most other cameras in this range don’t go over 3x.

The DIGIC III processor inside the camera allows face detection, a technology that is a must-have considering the kind of obscure focus that a lot of lower-end digital cameras. Sadly, this feature was not very well implemented, considering the results we got from our tests. I would say it was more of a hit and miss, according to the kind of backgrounds or lighting conditions that you shoot in. Still, the camera did manage to get the right focus more often than not.

What the camera required the most, however, is a good optical image stabilization. The digital image stabilization simply didn’t work too well, and added up to the image noise, but more on that later. I guess Canon decided to keep optical image stabilization as a primary feature that separates this model from the Canon Powershot A570.

Besides, all the expected scene modes (check tech specs for a listing), the A560 also provides a decent amount of manual control over your shots. Besides manual control over the exposure, there’s also an option for manual focus, for times when the camera just can’t seem to get it right. The manual focus came especially handy when shooting in macro mode, where the camera would find it a bit hard to focus on the right part.

Features-wise, the A560 has the stuff where it matters making it an ideal no-nonsense value camera.
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Performance
The camera’s colors leave little to be desired, but that little also matters these days considering there are other competing cameras offering really good black levels and the right kind of saturation. Speaking of saturation, the A560 does a pretty decent job of getting the colors right under most conditions but sometimes, it messes up when capturing over-exposed areas on certain colors. Take the car in the image below for example. The car standing in that picture was completely red, but the camera captured the parts where the sunlight directly reflected off it as shades of orange and yellow.

DIGIC III’s noise reduction technology works pretty well in regular lighting, but under low light situations and higher ISO settings there is still a noticeable amount of digital grain.

The overall sharpness of the camera seems affected by its noise reduction engine too, considering that there aren’t any pictures from the ones I took in my test shots that show a great amount of detail. Still, the detail levels are pretty much up to the level of satisfaction of most casual users.

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My favorite part about the camera was its responsiveness. All the buttons were easy to press and the response was practically immediate. Shut-down, start-up times and even zooming speeds were minimal. Let’s just say that you won’t miss that special moment, just because your camera didn’t start up fast enough.

Shot-to-shot timing was not too impressive at just under 4 seconds, but I wasn’t expecting much here from the A560 to begin with.

Overall the picture quality was not disappointing, but it was definitely not the best I’ve seen in this range. Considering the amazing functionality that the A560 has to offer, I was definitely expecting better colors and detail levels from my shots.

Conclusion
The MRP of Rs. 14,995 sounds a bit too drastic for a camera like A560, especially considering that the camera is available for under Rs. 11,000 abroad. We couldn’t get a street price on this camera, because frankly its not that easily available on the ‘streets’ as of this date. At its MRP, the A560 is definitely not worth it.

The A560’s biggest problem is that its stuck between two extremes—the A550 budget camera and the A570 with the much needed image stabilization. Do consider these alternatives before picking up this model.
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Canon Powershot A560