Canon PowerShot A510

Reviewed June 2005

Test Photos

STILL LIFE PHOTO

This subject is photographed in a room that has a mix of fluorescent and incandescent light, but which is not brightly lit. The camera's flash is used to add fill light. The backdrop is 1.95 m (6.5 ft) from the camera.

At this distance the flash of the A510 provides good illumination, even when the camera is set to its lowest sensitivity of 50 ISO. Wide angle shots show that the built-in flash is able to provide adequate lighting at 50 ISO.

With this mix of lighting, the Auto white balance reproduces the drop cloth's colour with a touch too much yellow.

ZOOM PHOTO

Now we zoom in on a specific area. The intent is to test the sharpness of the image at the zoom's maximum setting. The camera remains at the same distance as with the preceding photo.

Zoomed in, the auto white balance reproduces the drop cloth's colours as whiter than it had when the lens was set to wide angle, which is closer to the way we see it.

Set to Super fine compression, the camera yields images that are very detailed, and this is noticeable in the image shown below which is cropped from the full-size frame.

MACRO PHOTO

Using either the Macro mode, or the Manual focus mode, the A510 is able to focus on a subject a mere 5 to 45 cm (2 to 18 inches) from the front element of the lens; while at the maximum telephoto that distance becomes 30 to 45 cm (11.8 to 18 inches), which is relatively narrow focus range.

With the zoom at the wide angle end, the A510 captures an image at the minimum focus distance that encompasses just over 5 cm (2 inches).

BUILDING PHOTO

This image is our outdoor test. The architecture of the building, in particular the angled girders, immediately show the presence of jaggies. The shadowed entrance can also often reveal the quality of the exposure.

The A510 produces a bright and well-exposed image that has no compression artefacts.

A slight chromatic aberration can be seen below the building's beams, appearing as a purple line. While the phenomenon is inconsequential here, it can become more noticeable if the background is even brighter.

ZOOM PHOTO

Zooming in on the entrance of the building, the shadowed entrance takes on a greater importance for the metering and can cause an overexposure of sections that are directly lit.

Zoomed in, the frame contains a greater contrast between those areas that are directly lit by the sun, and the deep shadows in the entrance. As can be seen, the exposure is quite good, but the foreground is very close to being overexposed.

But, one fact speaks well to the sharpness of the lens: the small sign on the right hand door asking to "Please use other door" is almost legible, an excellent level of detail for a 4X zoom and a 3.2 megapixel CCD.

NIGHT PHOTO

As this camera is capable of a long exposure, a photo taken at night is included.

While both the Tv (shutter priority) mode and the Manual mode provide a maximum exposure time of 15 seconds, the Manual mode is more flexible. The Manual mode has the advantage of providing control over the aperture, while the Tv mode's program will normally select a smaller aperture to yield an image that is closer to reality, but which will be darker.

With the Manual mode however, selecting a large aperture such as f2.6 will ensure a brighter, and more interesting image.

Moreover, as the A510 provides control over the white balance in both of these modes, with a subject such as the one shown here, the white balance can be set so as to lessen the influence of the street lighting on the colour of the image. Setting the white balance to incandescent is generally effective, and tends to produce an image with a greater blue content.

Increasing the sensitivity of the CCD produces progressively brighter images, and it is only at 400 ISO that noise remains easily visible even after the noise reduction process.