Product Reviews

Canon's PowerShot A430 is a simple digital snapper that's designed for people who just want to point-and-shoot without any fuss. At first glance, there's very little to distinguish it from other compacts on the market. Its design is basic and its resolution is, by modern standards, nothing special.

Although there are few manual controls, all of the features you'd expect of a compact are there. Control over exposure is simply a plus and minus affair, which will be fine for many users, but will frustrate more demanding snappers. Colour control is more precise, with a full range of balancing options, including an evaluative mode for tricky mixed lighting. There's also a colour mode that has options for differing skin tones, a mode that mimics the look of slide film, one for sepia and so on. More unusually, there's a custom colour mode that allows adjustment of individual colours, contrast, saturation and sharpness. This is a fun extra that's also useful if you like to print direct from the camera.

The camera's most impressive feature is its super macro mode, which enables focusing as close as 10mm - an unusual facility for a compact. There's also a little extra on the zoom front. Almost every compact has a 3x optical zoom, but the A340 has a 4x. It's not a huge difference, but it will get you just that little bit closer to the action. The zoom is somewhat jerky though, which can prove annoying for critical composition.

At the touch of a button

The Powershot's interface is straightforward and quickly becomes second nature. Commonly used functions - zoom,

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flash and macro - are all located on the large button at the rear. All of the other functions, such as metering modes, camera speed, image size, white balance and so on are controlled by the function and menu buttons.

Some aspects of picture quality are very good indeed. Default colour rendition is very clean and natural, and exposures in auto are reliable too, coping well with a wide contrast range.

For its target user, this camera won't disappoint in terms of picture quality and although the resolution is relatively low there's still plenty of information. It's only really let down under magnification, where you'll see smudgy detail, quite a lot of digital noise and evidence of compression and purple fringing. For most though, this shouldn't be a problem. In normal 6 x 4in prints, errors and distortions are at an acceptable level. The exceptions are low-light and night photos in which a relatively high level of digital noise (speckling) is visible. This is, however, a problem with almost all budget digital cameras, so we didn't hold it too much against it.

Smooth operator

The PowerShot A430 starts up impressively quickly, and both auto-focus and shutter response times are also pretty speedy too. It's still not the fastest camera around when it comes to taking photos, but you'll only be waiting a second or two between shots. However, when using flash, you'll be waiting anything between seven and 12 seconds between shots, which is too long for any camera.

At up to 30fps, video capture quality is smooth, and there are options to alter the white balance and colour - something not found on many digital cameras. When you're playing back your clips there is also an adjustable slow motion option, as well as basic editing functions.

If you're looking for a budget camera that you don't want to be too precious about, or you just want to take your first steps into the world of digital photography then the A340 is a good buy. Its specification may be outdated, but it's affordable, uncomplicated, and performs well on the whole. If, however, you want to enlarge your photos or you have any creative ambitions, look elsewhere.