The successor to last year's successful entry-level PowerShot A460, the new 7.1 megapixel A470 model has undergone a striking external makeover, matched dramatically by a number of key internal enhancements. The PowerShot A470 is a stylish and compact model, that is available in four different color accents – blue, red, orange and gray – over a contoured metallic finish body that highlights the camera's new design and reflects the camera user's individuality, personality and taste.
Offering 3.4x optical zoom, a large 2.5-inch LCD monitor, and 7.1-megapixel CCD, the PowerShot A470 features the ease of a point-and-shoot camera design coupled with a few advanced features for more savvy users. Canon's PowerShots are known for their user-friendliness and good quality, and the PowerShot A470 upholds that reputation well.
Canon tries to give the A470 a much-needed injection of style by offering four color choices: gray, blue, red, and orange. Unfortunately, colorful accents can't hide the camera's chunky, unattractive design. It feels like a king-size candy bar, measuring almost 4 inches long, 2 inches thick, and more than an inch and a half wide. At 7.6 ounces with an SD card and two AA batteries, it also weighs in as one of the heftiest budget cameras available. The lens and LCD screen both jut out uselessly from the body, giving it a bumpy, uneven feel. Compared with the huge selection of budget point-and-shoots on the market measuring just an inch thick or less, the A470 is downright huge. On the bright side, the camera's large body makes it easy to grip and hold, and its wide design leaves room for large, simple controls that even bigger thumbs can comfortably manipulate.
Canon's Genuine Face Detection Technology automatically detects, tracks, focuses and optimizes the exposure on up to nine forward looking human faces in the frame or can lock onto a specific face in the crowd, ensuring that all (or one) are in focus and properly exposed, with or without flash. While the Face Detection algorithm automatically prioritizes up to nine human faces in a scene, it can also be instructed via the Face Select and Track function to lock on to a single face in the crowd, ensuring that the chosen subject is finely focused, no matter where it appears in the frame.The A470 is quite a chunky camera, measuring 104.8 x 55.1 x 40.7mm, nearly twice the thickness of some of the IXUS range. It's also surprisingly heavy, weighing 165g minus batteries, or around 210g including a couple of AA alkalines.
However its corpulent dimensions do make it easy to hold securely, with the raised detail on the front providing a comfortable finger grip.as the same familiar function menu system found on all of Canon's recent compact cameras, although here it is somewhat simplified. The camera has two basic shooting modes; an auto mode in which virtually all the function menu options are disabled apart from picture size and drive mode, and a "manual" mode in which exposure compensation, ISO setting, white balance and the custom colours option are available. As well as these modes there is a scene mode option with ten scene programs.The range of features available on the main menu isn't great. There the usual three metering mode options, three autofocus options including face detection, and a small selection of flash mode options, and that's pretty much your lot.
The LCD monitor isn't one of Canon's best. It has a diagonal size of 2.5 inches, nut it only has a resolution of 115,000 dots, and the angle of view is distinctly limited, being approximately 45 degrees in either direction vertically, and only slightly more horizontally.
The PowerShot A470 digital camera will be available in April and will carry and estimated selling price of US$129.99. The digital camera kit includes the PowerShot A470 Body, AA-size Alkaline Battery (x2), SD Memory Card SDC-32M, Wrist Strap WS-800, Digital Camera Solution CD-ROM, USB Interface Cable IFC-400PCU, AV Cable AVC-DC300.
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