» Price: $329 » Available: From authorised dealers
THE PowerShot A1100 IS is the latest in Canon's A series cameras where sex appeal and smarts are pumped up but manual controls thrown out.
An A series used to mean a great budget camera for beginners who wish to master photography by experimenting with aperture and shutter speed controls.
Left in Auto mode, the 12.1-megapixel camera will detect faces and how close a subject is to the camera.
It will then adjust the camera settings to give the best focus, colour and brightness for the subject and background.
I held it 1cm away from a ribbon then swung it to hone in on a family photo displayed on a computer monitor.
It flipped effortlessly from macro mode (for close-up of the ribbon) to face recognition - picking up all the four faces in the shot.
Start-up takes just over one second. Zooming from its widest angle of 35mm to the maximum telephoto of 140mm - a 4x optical zoom - takes less than two seconds.
The A1100 clocked 1.1 frames per second (fps) in continuous shooting. With the flash firing, it slowed to 0.4fps - still decent for a compact.
People who like one-handed shooting will like the 202g camera's layout: All the controls fall on the right of the camera which has a slight bulge serving as a handgrip.
For more control, you can quickly choose from five modes like portrait - to be more forgiving on faces - and kids and pets - to capture subjects that move around - by just turning a mode dial on the top of the camera.
Another nine modes like fireworks and sunsets are tucked away in a menu which can be accessed after a twist of the mode dial and a click of a selector button.
In daylight, the colours were vibrant - the chilli oil in a bowl of curry mee looked indecently spicy - without being unreal.
Noise shows as early as ISO 400.
White balance was spot-on except with indoor scenes lit with energy-saving lamps where pictures of my children's faces took on a yellowish tinge.
But when the flash was fired, the colours were true.
The flash is well-controlled - even objects as close as 30cm away are evenly lit.
The gizmo runs on two AA batteries. Use rechargeable ones as they give twice more juice - 350 shots compared to 140 using alkalines.
Slightly thicker than a pack of playing cards, the A1100 comes in silver, pink, blue or green.
Final say
A pretty budget compact that handles well and delivers great photos in daylight as well as indoors with flash
By Tan Chong Yaw
This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life.
