Canon Powershot A70 Digital Camera [3MP 3xOptical]

A little smaller in all dimensions than its predecessor, the A70 uses a 3x Canon zoom lens with a further 3.2x digital zoom and offers macro shooting down to a reasonable 50 mm. The zoom level control is a little, self-centring collar around the shutter release which can be fiddly to use. The shutter button is positioned forward on the right-hand grip, which is designed to hide compartments for the four AA batteries. Rechargeables can be used, but are not included.

As well as the mode selector wheel on the camera's top surface, which includes specialist settings for movement and night photography, the main controls on its back are simple and well laid out. There's a mode switch for recording and replaying images and a diamond of buttons for working through the camera's menu system. Four buttons underneath its small LCD display complete the set. The LCD itself is surrounded by a silver fascia, which can be distracting.

The PowerShot A70 supports direct connection to Canon's own CP-100 card photo printer as well as to some of its inkjet printers. This can speed up the printing process, as you don't have to rely on dabbling with software on your PC. Photos from the A70 show good colour balance and are not over-sharpened. Canon's new DIGIC colour processor is claimed to improve overall picture quality and processing speed. This is a good camera for those wanting a step-up from entry level 1 megapixel digital cameras. --Simon Williams

Product Description
The Canon PowerShot A70 is a versatile digital camera featuring a high quality 3.2 megapixel CCD and 3x optical zoom lens. Improved shooting modes on this camera bring the "A" series cameras more in line with the "S" series at a very affordable price. These new additions to the shooting modes allow you to expand your knowledge of photography without having to worry about upgrading your camera at a later date.

The camera's CCD enables it to capture still images as large as 2048 x 1536 pixels and movies as large as 640 x 480 pixels. The A70 features a compact and retractable 35-105mm (35mm equivalent) 3x optical zoom lens. The lens features a maximum aperture of f2.8 (wide angle) to f4.8 (telephoto). This is complemented by a smooth digital zoom (10 x combined with optical zoom). The PowerShot A70 has 12 shooting modes (Image and Creative Zones have been added). These can be selected from a mode dial on the top of the camera, which now includes all the main PowerShot shooting modes that are featured on the higher range "S" and "G" series cameras. It also incorporates the new DIGIC processor for even better colour reproduction and iSAPS, which stands for "intelligent Scene Analysis based on Photographic Space" and relates to image rendition for the creation of a natural-looking scenes or colours as seen by the photographer.

The A70 uses advanced lens technology. An iris-type aperture enables multi-stop iris control and elegant blur. The camera employs a six-blade iris aperture, allowing the aperture to be set in intervals of one-third of a stop. Also, because the aperture is almost perfectly circular, beautiful soft-focus effects can be achieved. The A70 also supports PTP (picture transfer protocol). This allows driverless image communications with computers when combined with recent operating systems (Windows XP or Mac OS). A computer using these systems will automatically select the correct drivers for the camera. On older operating systems a driver will have to be installed.

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