Canon PowerShot A560 Digital Camera

The Canon Sureshot A560 produces high quality images and is extremely easy to use. Its controls are intuitive and readily accessible. The automatic controls are accurate and sensitive, coping with the vast majority of situations. The face recognition technology ensures the colour balance is accurate and that the key features of the shot (ie your partner, family or friends) are in focus. The manual settings provide control for difficult shots, such as those which require a fill-in flash or when you want to create effects such as motion-blur. The greatest asset for me is the viewfinder. I often find using an LCD screen awkward and, in bright sunlight, difficult to use. The screen also wastes battery power. Talking of which, being able to insert standard AA batteries is another great advantage over cameras which need to be plugged into a charger (not many of those on a beach or mountain-top!). There is also no time limit to the length of video clip (other than the size of the memory card). The quality of image and sound is good - sufficient to be edited into a TV quality video. It is slightly more chunky (but not much more) than some compacts - but this is to accommodate the AA batteries - which for me is a trade off I can live with - particularly as the image quality is far better than many more expensive compacts.