Good first camera for kids or novices

Category: Review on Canon Powershot A430 Digital Camera

Posted by: 15-Oct-2006

Strengths: Lots of features for little money

Weaknesses: Weak flash, only 4 megapixels

A simple, low-tech digital with limited power, the A430 is a good first camera for kids or occasional photographers on a budget. It only has a maximum resolution of 4 megapixels, but it offers a number of features that make it a good value. It has a respectable 1.8 inch LCD display, and an optical viewfinder, which is great for sunny situations where the LCD is unreadable. It starts up and focuses quickly, with a nice fast shutter.

The extras are surprising in such an inexpensive, fundamental camera – a nice 4X optical zoom lens (an improvement over the standard issue 3X lens on most point-and-shoots) and has a “super macro” mode that allows you to shoot as close as 1 cm in addition to the standard one-touch macro mode that lets you get as close as 5 cm. The 4 megapixel resolution isn’t ideal, but for the casual, non-professional photographer it’s fine.

As with all of the cameras in the Canon Powershot line, the A430 offers some unique filters and editing functions to let you manipulate your photos in the camera without any special software. You can accent one color in a picture while turning the rest of the shot to grayscale, or balance colors that have been washed out by the flash.

While the PowerShot A430 offers a lot for its compact size, the flash isn’t the best – it’s underpowered, lighting only for about 10 feet, and its recharge time is slow. And it comes with a meager 16MB memory card, so you’ll need to buy a larger one. Overall, it’s a solid, reasonably priced digital that would be a good buy for either kids or novice photographers who just want to take good, clear snapshots.