Product Reviews

There aren't many digital cameras that cost less than £200 and include the full complement of priority and manual exposure modes, but Canon's PowerShot A540 is one of the few.

This is a plain-looking camera, a little bulkier than usual and, at 230g, not particularly light. Still, the curved plastic body feels tough and the 21/2" screen gives a modern feel to the design. Just a few months ago a screen this size was considered a luxury, but it's fast becoming standard everywhere but at entry level. The A540's screen has only 85,000 pixels, which is fewer than many smaller screens and far fewer than the 230,000 pixels of the best. The screen also made pictures look under-saturated and skin tones a little yellow, but fortunately the problem disappeared once we put the pictures on to our PC.

Power comes from two AA batteries, which didn't last long in our test; you'll need to budget for four rechargeable batteries so you can carry spares with you. The camera doesn't keep you waiting long between shots, capturing a picture every two seconds. In continuous mode using a fast SD card, it managed 138 shots in a minute, a fantastic achievement at this price. The flash takes around five seconds to recharge between shots.

Canon's menu and control system is one of the best around. A Function button accesses a list of the most commonly used settings, including resolution, white balance and ISO, while a Menu button reveals various setup and advanced options. Exposure compensation, aperture and shutter speed are accessible without rummaging through menu screens.

A zoomed section of the picture appears onscreen to help with manual focusing. Although the screen's low resolution is a hindrance for making accurate settings, it's still usable. For those who prefer theme presets there's a strong collection available, with night, snow, landscape and portrait plus some fun creative processes such as panorama stitch, sepia and Color Swap, which maps one colour on to another and gives surprisingly pleasing results.

Video is recorded at 640x480 (VGA) resolution at 30fps or 320x240 at 60fps for smooth motion. The automatic exposure reacts well to changes in lighting conditions but sound quality is basic. There's little to criticise about still image quality, though. Photographs were vibrant and detailed, and despite our best attempts we failed to fool the camera's auto-exposure. Skin tones were warm yet natural in direct sunlight, ambient light and with flash. The macro mode revealed some stunning close-up detail and the 4x zoom proved its worth over the 3x zoom lenses of competing cameras. Our only criticism in this area is that detail was sometimes lost in bright, richly saturated areas of pictures.

Low-light photography without the flash is always a compromise of sorts, but the ability to set the A540 to ISO 800 is useful when you need a short exposure time in low light. The downside is significant amounts of image noise, though the results at ISO 800 are just about sufficient for viewing onscreen and fine for web pages. At ISO 400 noise is still evident but not intrusively so.

There's nothing to choose between the A540 and the Pentax Optio M10 in terms of image quality. But while the A540 is heavier and a little more expensive, it's also faster and offers full manual exposure control. If photographic control is more important to you than compactness and you can put up with the limited battery life, Canon's camera is an excellent choice.