Canon PowerShot A490 Review

Review Introduction

The Canon PowerShot A490 is an entry-level compact which features easy pick-up-and-play modes for those spontaneous moments you need photographed. Its affordable price makes it very attractive to casual photographers or beginners who would use this to practice composing shots. It’s an ideal tool to use for those who are even new to the digital camera experience, so it makes a great Christmas gift to your gramps or young nephew. The built-in predefined scene modes make it easy for the user to produce beautiful shots of landscapes, people or portraits.

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Canon PowerShot A490 Review

The first thing you’ll notice with the A490 is its body, which certainly looks and feels like a handy compact. However, this model is thicker than most compacts today, thus allowing the user to have a firm one-handed grip while taking shots. If your fingers are quite big though, you might find it hard to press the buttons, as they are quite small, but are very clearly marked for easy navigation. Shame, though, that it doesn’t have a menu dial for its different scene modes, which is one of the strengths of this camera, along with the Smart Auto feature.

It has a 10 megapixel count, so, the photos still retain some of their consistency even after zooming or cropping. The A490 also makes use of a 2.5 inch LCD screen for composing your shots, which is quite small. The screen has a low resolution and often shows some grain, but when transferred to another device (such as a PC), the photos look decent enough. The LCD can be hard to see under bright light though, so be wary of this when using it outdoors.

For a camera priced like this, the PowerShot A490 doesn’t perform badly, as long as you don’t expect a superb performance. The camera operates a bit on the slow side, as it takes some seconds to take the first photo after starting it up, and up to 6 seconds after taking a shot using flash. This is well compensated with the flash’s power, though, as subjects are well lit at even 4-5 feet away. Its 122mm telephoto lens and 3.3x optical zoom makes it decent enough to capture some great landscape shots and group photos. It’s powered with 2 AA batteries, making it a convenient choice for travelers.

Overall, this certain PowerShot is really a snap to use and will definitely appeal to beginners in the field looking for a user-friendly and affordable compact camera that they can bring along anywhere – without the need for a high performance cam, of course.