Canon PowerShot A40 Digital Camera with Free 32MB CF Card [2.0MP 3xOptical]
Average Customer Rating
(5.0 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
Most Helpful First | Newest First (5 out of 5)Much better than I'd expected
I wanted a smaller camera for holiday snaps etc, as my Canon EOS500 35mm kit is both bulky and heavy to carry about. The A40 is nice and compact, with all of the controls well placed and easy to understand.
I'd never used a digital before, and wasn't expecting the picture quality to be particularly good, but I've been very pleasantly surprised. Even in fully automatic mode it takes sharp, properly exposed pictures in most conditions, and with the manual settings I've managed to get good results where the automatic mode has struggled. I'll certainly be taking it with me whenever I go out now.
I'm extremely pleased with my purchase, and with Amazon's speed of delivery and price -
In agreement with other buyers, I'd reccomend also buying the following, especially if you plan on using it a lot:
64 Mb or 128 Mb compact flash card - The 8Mb card that comes with the camera gets filled in no time at all if you're shooting in superfine mode. I got the Viking card from Amazon... nice perfomance and I haven't found cheaper.
1800MaH NiMH rechargable batteries and charger, otherwise you'll end up spending a fortune on alkalines.
I also bought a Compact Flash Card reader. The download software that comes with the camera worked fine, but it took about 3 - 5 seconds to download one picture in superfine mode. Downloading an entire cardfull seemed to take forever. With a card reader you can do it about 40 times faster.
(5 out of 5)Best camera at this price
I spent many months carefully researching the entry level digital camera market and came to the following conclusion. The Canon PowerShot A40 is the most feature rich 2MP camera around. I have had it for a week now.
It's a well made camera, and the weight of the 4 AA batteries gives it a nice stable feel in the hand. The controls are well laid out and the LCD screen, while small, is clear and detailed.
It's a real Jekyll and Hyde machine. On the one hand you have full Auto mode which is as easy to use as falling off a log. Everything is taken care of as you hold down the button halfway for focussing and depress it fully to take your picture.
Where the camera really comes into its own is the Program and Manual modes. Program is a halfway house between Auto and Manual. It will allow you to select options such as white balance, ISO speed and exposure compensation, while still leaving shutter speed and aperture decisions to the camera.
Full manual mode gives you full control: shutter speeds up to 15 seconds and 2 aperture settings at each zoom point. This makes the camera able to churn out pretty good night shots. Just remember to get a tripod if you want to play with this - avoiding camera shake for 15 seconds is pretty much impossible in your hand!
There are a couple of minor gripes. Canon only supply an 8Mb flash card as standard. This is pathetically small, allowing only 7-8 pictures at best quality. Get a bigger card (Amazon doing a deal with a 32Mb is better, but I recommend at least 64Mb). They also don't supply a case, so you must get one (unless you think that bubble wrap is the latest fashion). Sometimes the auto focus is fooled in low light or close up situations and cannot get a lock.
Oh and one last thing - get NiMH batteries and a good charger. Don't even think of using alkalines - it'll ruin you.
(5 out of 5)Better... Better... Best!
We currently use the Powershot A10 on a number of projects for my business, and heard about the release of the two new cameras from Canon - the A30 and A40. Both of these replace the older A10 and A20 cameras which were good products anyway. The newer cameras build upon what was already a good camera - i.e. Brilliant battery life - over 300 shots (some with flash), and just pop in a new set of 4xAAs when they run out (or use some rechargeable LI-Ions if you want to be a bit greener!); Good image quality, Very fast, and just Soooo easy to use (although as we found out at the Christmas party, they don't bounce too well! :) ).
The A40 has similar features to the A30, but also includes a 7.5x Digital zoom (instead of 6x) on top of the 3x optical zoom, and has a microphone for recording sound on the short videos.
The camera is dead easy to use, just put it into full auto mode and point-and-click! The photo shows for a short while for you to check or delete it before it writes it to the CF card - you can zoom into the pic to check for camera shake. (By the way, only an 8Mb CF is normally supplied, but it looks like Amazon give you a 64Mb at the moment - about 65 pics in maximum resolution, superfine quality, but you can get away with just normal quality or less resolution and the pictures still look brilliant and print to A4 - about 400 pics).
Alternatively, use the P or M modes to take more contol over the camera, including Fixed focus, different shutter speeds (from almost nothing to 15 seconds), different ISO speeds, loads of light balances, and a few different 'film types' including soft edge, black & white and sepia.
New features also give better light metering, the ability to do the 360degree pics you sometimes see on websites but now in both directions (brilliant supplied software guys!), short videos (very good quality, but better to get a video camera!), and my favourite feature - the sequentil shot mode where the camera takes around 10 photos one after another (about 2-3 per second), then writes these to the CF card - now you CAN get the perfect photo, as you can choose the best shot and delete the rest!
Oh, and when you want to take those nighttime shots with the streaky lights, the screen previews the exposure for you, then when you take the shot, it digitally removes the little dots and flares you often see on CCD images when they are exposed for too long.
All in all, a super camera at a brill price. Don't know if the Ixus has all the same features, but it's 100 quid more anyway. The only downside is the lack of hotshoe to drive an external flash (otherwise underwater use is great with a case), and the new lens/filter addons require an adapter which is different from the A10 one (they still block the normal viewfinder, but that's okay, as you want to see what the camera sees anyway via the screen).
Go on.. Buy one now!
(4 out of 5)Great Camera
A great camera for a great price. The only problem that I can tell is when the batteries are running down the autofocus fails to reliably focus. Easily rectified by keeping a spare set of batteries.
Once again I *MUST* recommend you go out and get NiMH rechargeable batteries as it kills AAs super-fast. (about 100 photos with LCD on) Also the 32 meg CF card is the smallest you want, think about a 128meg card as an upgrade.
(5 out of 5)Canon Powershot A40
I recently got this camera from amazon and what can I say but that I have been turned. This is probably the best 200 quid I have spent in a long time. The camera has a quick mode where you can simply snap away to your hearts content, or manual modewhere you can set everything, flash, red-eye reduction, shutter speed, light values and many more. It also does movies and although there is an unchangable time limit to it. 30 seconds is more than enough time. The 32 Mb card also does wonders, I managed to fit 24 pictures and 6 15 second movies on it and the card could still take more. I recommend this camera to anyone new or an expert in the field of photography. And you can catch on quickly and you will soon be taking pictures photographers would be jealous of in a matter of days. And at £200, no one could argue at this price. 5 stars and 2 more