Canon PowerShot A630 Digital Camera Reviews

I am a photoaholic.  I've always enjoys taking photos, scrapbooking and framing.  As a Mom of two gorgeous children, it is hard to just not be snap happy.  My prize camera for taking my Christmas card photos or Easter portraits is my Canon Digital Rebel XS  However the PowerShot A630 is a great camera that produces above average photos.  There are times, like when horseback riding or touring New York city, that I don't want the weight or the expense of my Canon Digital Rebel XS strapped on but I still want to be able to get great photos.   That's when the PowerShot A630 is the perfect camera....

I bought this at age 10 as a first serious camera.

Now I'm 13 and have a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi. (See my review here.)

The A630 served me very well by getting me hooked on photography.

I chose this camera because it, like all the Canons, is very easy to use and well-designed. Also because it, when I bought it at least, was a pretty powerful camera, for a compact.

Pros:

8 MP is pretty good, even for today. It's certainly adequate for full-page prints.

4x Optical zoom is very good for a compact these days.

The Vari-Angle viewfinder is great and very useful.

This has an optical viewfinder, which...

I had been using my daughter's 4 Megapixel camera to take pictures of my kids' sporting events and our Scout troop, but the pictures just weren't sharp enough.  I saw an advertisement for this camera and liked the price, so I bought it along with a 2GB memory card which is necessary to store more than about ten pictures. 

The book of instructions is HUGE, but for taking every day pictures, it is pretty simple to just put it on "auto" mode and point and shoot.  My kids and I were taking pictures within ten minutes of taking it out of the box.  The instructions are a bit confusing for manually...

When I was shopping for a camera I wanted something that was easy to use right away without having to read a manual to just take a photo.  This camera takes great shots.  I like the zoom lens that auto focuses right away.  It takes great action photos without the blur that I would get on my older camera.  The LCD screen is large enough to view photos completely.  You can view and enlarge each photo to see the background detail easily.

This camera can be used by a novice like myself and a more advanced user.

The one thing I would have liked to have is a memory to hold a few photos without the...

This camera is worth the extra money.  The flip out screen is wonderful for taking photos of you and another person.  It is also nice because you can flip the screen in to prevent scratching.

I research every big purchase to the extreme before buying and everything I read said that this was the best camera for great photos.  After having it for a year, I agree.  It takes wonderful pictures and is easy to use.  I like to edit- specifically crop photos, and this camera allows me to do that and still have wonderful pictures.  It is also easy to download onto the computer.