Product Reviews

Not the lightest of the bunch, but Canon's Powershot A40 has pretty much everything you could expect from a high quality compact film camera.

Image 6/6

Something very nice must be stuffed into the considerable bulk of the camera because the Canon took some fantastic pictures - in fact, overall it was one of the best for turning light beams into digital images. Its lens was even and the results were correspondingly smooth, crisp and clean. Colour accuracy was excellent and the automatic focus and exposure where, for the most part, flawless. Even a bit of abuse using the manual exposure settings gave decent results.

Features 5/6

If taking first-class still images isn't enough for you, this camera will grab enough video to fill your Compact Flash card. If you're just after a sequence of stills

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the Continuous mode will take three photos every two seconds - just like in spy films. The virtual film speed (ISO) can be changed to allow faster shutter speeds or to permit shooting in dark conditions, and the results can be rotated, viewed in an index grid, displayed directly to a TV screen or even printed directly to a compatible Digital Print Order Format (DPOF) printer using a DIF-100 cable.

Design 6/6

The zoom/wide angle control doubles as a zoom tool for viewing captured images on the LCD panel on the back of the camera's body. This is much more handy than messing around with menu options. Accessing different shooting modes, such as close-up (macro), outdoors and portrait was also easy thanks to the single button below the LCD screen. A similar button is available to change the flash modes. While some people may like a plain, button-less design, having each of these features close to hand makes life a lot easier. Portrait subjects can only hold their smiles for so long and impromptu photo opportunities last seconds, so the less time you spend fiddling with menu settings the better.

Overall

The shocking thing about this camera is that, despite its undoubted qualities, it's one of the least expensive here. It's not going to fall apart on you if you don't drop it, the images it takes can be stunning and it has all the features you are ever going to use, and more.