The Canon Powershot A550

I came across this review on Ken Rockwell’s web site and decided that an article in praise of this mighty little point and shoot wouldn’t go amiss here.

I have been using this camera for around 18 months now and it does everything that Ken says it does and as well as he says it does. I have made as much money using this camera as using my Nikon d40x. For natural light shots that are relatively straight forward I will often use this as a first choice camera.

Many of the photographs on our web site were shot with this camera especially the product/stock type shots where the lighting is easy to control.

It is a very comfortable camera, it feels great in the hand, the slightly more chunky build with the weight of the batteries makes it a much better bet for my shovel like hands than the daintier slimmer models (I was going to by one of the Nikon Coolpix range originally)

I cannot say enough about the sharpness of the lens – it is unbeatable in the price range, I’ve never has a shot taken with this camera rejected on sharpness grounds at either end of the zoom let alone in the middle.

The menu system is, to my mind, much more friendly and intuitive than Nikon’s which is probably just a personal preference but it took me no time at all to feel comfortable operation this camera.

If a shot requires additional lighting other than a little fill I would not use this camera, that would be the only time where the DSLR would be up to my eye without a second thought. This is not the camera for you if you are wanting to do a lot of flash work but then again very few point and shoots are. There is no hotshoe or connection for an external flashSmall tripod and available light are absolutely fine though. If you are ever tempted to use the camera for the main source of illumination and you have any other option go with the other option.

A couple of thoughts on the Ken Rockwell article based on thousands of photographs shot with this camera:

The A550 is inexpensive, but it’s not cheap. It’s made out of the same stuff Canon makes their other cameras. Canon makes excellent stuff. The A550 is worlds apart from the nameless junk for which you can pay more from shopping channels. It feels tight and precise, and the packaging is identical to the packaging, CDs and literature I get when I bought my $3,000 Canon 5D. The A550 is a quality product.

Just to reinforce the above point, I have used mine most days over the last couple of years and it functions every bit as well as it did on day one – even if it gave up the ghost completely tomorrow I would not feel cheated and would probably be looking on Ebay for the exact same model.

The A550’s lens is sharper than some of the more expensive Canons. The A550’s lens is very sharp in the corners at the wide setting, where the SD800 gets soft.

The lens  certainly matches the quality of the Nikon kit lenses supplied with the Nikon d40x (to my eye at any rate).

This shot is exactly as shot by the A550, -2/3 exposure compensation, Vivid color mode. Sorry, the palms were all dead from a recent frost.

dropping the exposure on the A550 on a sunny day is a neat little trick, It gives the photograph the appearance that it was shot using a polarizing filter, especially with blue sky and white paintwork.

If you are looking for a serious camera but don’t want to jump into the DSLR pool for a while you could do a lot worse than grabbing one of these, they are probably seeling on Ebay for next to nothing.  If mine were to die I would attempt to buy another identical one. I cannot thing of any other piece of technology that I’ve said that about two years after the initial purchase.