Canon PowerShot A460

Canon’s PowerShot A460 is an entry-level digital compact that sports some advanced features to make it a tempting photo-treat, but is it?

The PowerShot A460 upgrades the popular PowerShot A430, launched last year, but retains the same blocky-looking, plastic build and lines of that model. The plastic build is enhanced by a silver-coloured metal band that stretches over the top and down the left side of the camera bisecting the two main parts of the body. A small control dial peeps up over the top edge of the camera behind the shutter release and on/off button.

Powered is delivered by two AA cells that fire the camera up quickly enough; power-up to first shot time is a little over 1.5-seconds, so not bad for a camera at this level. Indeed, performance throughout is good baring the use of flash when shot to shot times extend to around seven seconds and, annoyingly, the camera locks up, the screen goes black and you have to wait for it to do its thing.

Interestingly, the A460 has a clear optical viewfinder, which mediates this problem to a degree, allowing you to continue to compose another shot but you still have to wait while the camera replenishes the flash.

The camera’s five megapixel CCD captures the light well enough and benefits from Canon’s DIGIC II image processing engine; the camera’s sensitivity options have been limited to a range starting at ISO 80 and running no higher than ISO 400 means any noise the DIGIC II processor has to deal with is fairly limited in most instances at lower ISOs.

As well as limited sensitivity, another issue is one of handling. I was frustrated by is the four-way controller; it’s combined with lens zoom control and this can lead to confusion as some parts of the four-way controller also attend to other shooting tasks depending on the mode you’re in. These include flash and macro/focus mode selection for example, so that takes a little time to get used to.

The aforementioned lens is a flexible, 38-152mm 4x zoom offering a rather better range than the average 3x lens found on most cameras at this level. It is sharp and with a fastest aperture of F/2.8 offers good flexibility too.

Once you’ve overcome the camera’s idiosyncrasies, it’s actually easy to use and includes some features not normally on camera at this level. A custom white balance (WB) setting (plus the usual array of WB presets for daylight, cloud and fluorescent lighting) is a good example and exposure compensation to +/-2EV helps with more challenging lighting situations.

There’s a full range of metering modes evaluative, centre-weighted and spot and metering I found to be very reliable on this test in all but high contrast scenes. But, one of the more disappointing aspects of the A460 is the movie mode, yes, you can shoot widescreen clips, which is nice, but the 640x480 high quality clips it is also capable of are limited to a very jerky-looking 10fps.

The camera’s manual shooting setting is a misnomer; it does not provide actual control over shutter speeds and apertures for example but brings into play some of those more advanced features mentioned above. In other words, the camera has a two-step control ethos of basic, all-auto shooting and “manual” for access to the better features if simple point and shoot is not enough.

Of the scene modes available, you get a modest eight to play that cover the main option such as portrait, landscape, night scene and kids and pets to name a few. However an excellent super macro mode allows you to shoot as close as 1cm – ideal for really close up, erm, close ups and a mode that really makes the most of the cameras resolution.

Colours are naturally rendered in the shots but can be tweaked with enhanced colour (vivid) plus there’s sepia and a black and white modes for further creativity options. The camera uses external storage in the shape of SD/MMC memory cards and is powered by dual AA cells, which it must be said were disappointingly quick to splutter and die. You’ll need to get a set of rechargeable batteries toot sweet although, even my best set of 2300mAh cells had run dry after about 120 shots.

In terms of image quality, the lens performs well enough and is a nice piece of glass, detail is well captured and as the modest ISO settings on offer mean noise is not as big an issue as some cameras, at least until you get to ISO 400 where it becomes obvious particularly in high contrast areas of a shot, pictures look very clean indeed. The relatively low maximum ISO means less noise processing is required and so images retain more detail. However, the downside of lower ISOs means the flash needs to be brought into play more often.

Colour is natural-looking (though you have the vivid, black and white and sepia options to play with too) and auto white balance control is very good. Metering is reliable but can be hampered by high contrast shots where it wanted to under expose. The focus set up is excellent and the intelligent AiAF system works well most times with a selected AF point override allowing you to choose the central AF zone, on its own for challenging subjects such as macro for example. Overall, then, the A460 provides a great balance between build, price and shooting flexibility.

And finally, if you pay an extra £40 you can buy this camera as part of a bundle with the Selphy CP520 dye sublimation printer making it even better value.