Design
At 312 grams, the Canon PowerShot A75 is a bit large and chunky compared to many other 3.2-megapixel point-and-shoot cameras, but your hand fits comfortably around its handgrip. With an index finger resting on the shutter release or the concentrically mounted zoom lever, your thumb settles easily into a recess on the back of the camera, within reach of the other frequently accessed controls. The top-mounted power button is easy to find when you need it and not readily pressed by mistake.
The PowerShot A75 has a traditional Menu button, with three tabbed listings for adjusting basic camera features such as sound; formatting the CompactFlash card; and turning digital zoom, red-eye reduction, or automatic review on and off. A separate Function button activates a menu of features you're more likely to access while shooting.
Features
If the extensive manual controls and the ability to snap off 11 full-resolution pictures at a 2-frame-per-second clip in burst mode aren't enough to sell you on the Canon PowerShot A75, there are lots of other tasty features. The 3X zoom lens (35mm to 105mm equivalent on a 35mm-film camera) is fairly basic, but you can focus down to 5 centimeters at the wide-angle setting or 25 centimeters in telephoto mode. Shutter speeds of 15 seconds to 1/2,000 second and apertures adjustable from f/2.8 to f/8 provide a broader range than many cameras in this class. Canon's noise-reduction system kicks in automatically when exposures exceed 1.3 seconds.
Should you prefer your camera to do all the thinking, the PowerShot A75 has exposure and scene modes galore. In addition to full autoexposure, you can select Program AE, which adds the ability to customise many settings, including exposure compensation, white balance, ISO speed, or metering mode. Also available are aperture-priority and shutter-priority autoexposure options, as well as Portrait, Landscape, Night Scene, Fast Shutter (sports), Slow Shutter, and Stitch Assist (panorama) shooting modes.
Six special scene modes are available for taking pictures of foliage, snow, beach scenes, fireworks, underwater, and indoor settings. Useful for those who take both horizontally and vertically oriented photos is the optional ability to sense a picture's orientation and display it correctly during review.
You can choose standard center-point focus or opt for a nine-point system that uses autofocus to find the center of interest and outline the area of sharpest focus on the LCD. If you like shooting minimovies, you can grab up to 30 seconds of 640x480-pixel video with sound, then use Print mode to output up to 63 individual frames onto a single index sheet. The PowerShot A75 is both DPOF and PictBridge compatible, so you can make prints and index sheets of still images, too.
Performance
The Canon PowerShot A75 stands out with its ability to capture a burst of 11 full-resolution shots at nearly 2 frames per second. This Canon's impressive continuous shooting capabilities, coupled with fully manual controls, make it an excellent choice for action photography. However, aside from its burst mode, most of the PowerShot A75's performance figures were in the middle of the pack.
Only a noticeable shutter lag keeps the PowerShot A75 from being a primo sports shooter. Canon's autofocus system handled well-lit scenes with aplomb, but there was still a delay of 0.9 second between pressing the shutter release and capturing the shot. With less favourable, low-contrast lighting and the autoassist focus illuminator working full time, lag increased to 1.5 seconds. Power-up to first shot was on the slow side at a hair less than 4 seconds, while shot-to-shot times averaged an unremarkable 2 seconds without flash and about 3.6 seconds with flash and red-eye reduction activated.
Although 0.3 inch larger than the LCD in the previous PowerShot A70 model, this camera's 1.8-inch display was still difficult to view under direct sunlight.
Image quality
The Canon PowerShot A75's image quality was excellent for its 3-megapixel class. Our test images showed clean, neutral highlights and no tendency to blow out the lightest areas. Shadows, too, had lots of detail and no apparent colour casts. Colours were rich and vivid, and flesh tones realistic. Noise was relatively low until we set the sensitivity to ISO 400; even then, it wasn't terribly objectionable.
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hooter
08/12/2007, 11:34 AM
rating
8/10
Great camera until about a year after the warranty expired the CCD sensor died rendering the camera useless.
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pandabear
05/09/2004, 10:43 PM
Great Camera
I tried an Olympus 3.2MPixel Camera and returned it straight away. This is much better camera and I'm really happy with it. The battery life is excellent. The software is full proof, one button and you have your images on your computer. Great features. Just a little bigger then the others and takes 4 AA batteries instead of the usual 2. But in the end I want a good quality picture and thats what I get. I would definately recommend this camera or the new A85 (4MegaPixcel edition).
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22/08/2004, 03:51 PM
Great product
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