Home > Consumer Reviews > Canon PowerShot A570 IS Digital Camera With Image Stabilizer - Silver (7.1MP, 4x Optical Zoom) 2.5" LCD

I purchased one of these in June 2007 and have been using it ever since, and have now taken over 6000 photos on it, in all conditions, and it is still working. I was looking for something that was both light and small enough to take anywhere, and also with enough flexibility to cope with most situations. It has met and exceeded my expectations. As you can now buy it for half what I paid for it you can have a real bargain!

Obviously you need decent sized (and reasonably fast) memory cards if you are going to take many photos, same as any digital camera.

Yes, it does eat batteries, but there are several things you can do about this:
1. most of the power is used on starting, extending the lens and the powering the display, so rather than switching the camera on and off all the time, just turn the display on and off as needed. I have run it continuously all day like this (taking the odd picture of lecture presentations!)on one set of rechargeables.
2. Do not have image stabilisation (IS) running continuosly - alter the settings so that it only works when the shutter is depressed to the first setting (for focussing) - IS uses a lot of power.
3. 2500 mAh + rechargeables a must, but remember that they die pretty quickly if used hard - after less than a year I had a set gradually die on me, and first thought it was the camera (same faults as mentioned by others here), so don't necessarily blame it first.

I do have a couple of niggles - it does have a rather sensitive battery indicator, and, especially when cold will say that fully charged batteries are uncharged - take the batteries out and warm them up, the camera is then happy; switching position of the batteries helps also. Also, manual focussing is slow, and after switching the display off and on again the camera reverts to auto focus, why?

very disappointed. 2 major flaws.

1. It EATS up batteries, sometimes only after 20 or so pictures.

2. Many photos seem over-exposed with too-strong a light.

Even if it has other qualities, as outlined by camera-experts, please be aware the flaws i've outlined can be very annoying (and expensive).

I have now being using this model for a year. I like many of its features but there are two big problems. One you will probably already have read about is batteries. It is not really that the camera consumes too much power but that it has a battery sensor circuit that refuses to use batteries that still have plenty of charge left in them. That applies to both alkaline and LiMH rechargables. You can sometimes trick it, as has been said previously, by taking the batteries out and putting them back in again. You may get a whole day's extra shooting that way.
The other problem is indoor shooting in poor lighting conditions. You see what you are trying to photograph in good focus but as soon as you press the shutter button the focus changes and takes the picture blurred. I have been trying to find a way around this ever since I had the camera but the only solution appears to be to use manual focus.
A great pity that these problems spoil an otherwise excellent camera.

I've had this camera for about a year now and it withstood a lot of situations. I have the basic manual controls and the images are of good quality. I am not reviewing this model here to be honest, as there are loads of camera reviews on the internet, that's why we have Google. I am not an amateur neither a pro, I use the manual mode as much as the auto mode and this camera works well. Don't expect miracles, though. If you want pro quality, then buy a DSLR and you will be happy, because although you have the option to use adapters on this camera, it's not the same as switching the whole lens set as you can do on a DSLR. Canons are Canons and overall, it's a good brand that makes good products. The camera is kind of bulky at this day compared to the newest models, but obviously no one can complain as this model is, I guess 2~3 years old now.

I used a Powershot A40 from 2003 until last year which was always superb. I then bought a Lumix FX50 ( £200 ) because it has a Leica lens and was small enough to fit in a pocket. Guess what? It was nowhere near as good quality as the old 2Mp Canon. Just bought this and It's a lot of camera for the money. If I adjust it down to 2Mp it's still comparable to the Lumix!Plus it doesn't suffer mad fits of colour saturation on flash photos like the Lumix did. It may be a little chunky for a pocket, but if you prefer some control over your photos as apposed to "point and shoot" this will take some beating!