Labs

The A570 IS has its limitations, but never compromises your ability to take great pictures. The plastic design is plain, and it takes AA batteries rather than a rechargeable pack, but there's little else to criticise. Canon's Digic III processor works fast, taking a photo every 1.6 seconds, or at 1.7fps in continuous mode. There's also fast, accurate face detection

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for pleasing portrait shots.

The 4x zoom is a significant improvement on the 3x offered by most budget cameras. Optical image stabilisation is built into the lens, and works well. There's the usual collection of scene presets, but the A570 IS also includes aperture priority, shutter priority and full manual exposure modes - essential for creative photography. Manual exposure is particularly well implemented, with the preview accurately anticipating the brightness of the shot based on the selected shutter speed, aperture, ISO speed and flash settings. Unusually, manual focus is available too, although the low-resolution screen makes it hard to adjust accurately.

Crisp detail, a powerful macro mode and good colour balance convinced us of the PowerShot's image quality. Low-light shots at ISO 800 or 1600 were pretty noisy, but thanks to the stabilisation we were able to use ISO 400 with a slower shutter for clean, detailed pictures.