If you want to know just how advanced digital cameras have become, look at Canon's PowerShot A410. This 3.2-megapixel digital camera offers many nice basic features that will appeal to beginning photographers. Best of all, you might be able to find the PowerShot A410 for less than $100, if you aggressively shop around. It wasn't many years ago that you'd spend triple that amount or more for a digital camera with similar features.

The PowerShot A410's 3.2 megapixels of resolution are on the low end of today's newest digital cameras, but there is plenty of resolution for high-quality prints up to 5x7 inches (or 8x10 inches with ideal exposures).

This digital camera's 1.5-inch LCD is on the smaller end, as well, but it is sharp and is easily viewable in both indoor and outdoor lighting.

Finding a 3.2X optical zoom lens in this budget-priced digital camera is a wonderful surprise. The PowerShot A410's lens produces outstanding photos, especially in outdoor lighting. And you can shoot extremely close-up subjects, within a few inches, with good sharpness.

The PowerShot A410 offers very few significant manual setting features as Canon designed it for beginners to digital camera photography. You can select from 8 scene modes, which allow you to easily match your photo's exposure to the exterior lighting conditions.

As with most of the PowerShot A410's features, this unit's response times are much better than most budget-priced digital cameras and are comparable to much more expensive models. You can shoot your first photo in about 2 seconds after pressing the power button. Shutter lag runs about one-half second, although it's not noticeable when you use the PowerShot A410's auto-focus feature. Our tests showed that shot-to-shot delay is 1-2 seconds, and the PowerShot A410 has a nice continuous-shot mode of 10 photos in about 4 seconds. The PowerShot A410's only drawback in response times occurs when using the flash over long distances: Shot-to-shot delays then slow to a crawl at nearly 7 seconds.

Although the PowerShot A410 doesn't quite fit into the ultra-thin category of digital cameras, at 1.59 inches in thickness it's a small and lightweight model that will fit in most pockets. Canon also has given the PowerShot A410 great power conservation capabilities. This digital camera can shoot a few hundred photos on just two AA disposable batteries.


Pros: Great feature list for beginners, very low price, above average response times, good battery conservation
Cons: Very few manual control features, some features lag behind newer digital cameras, LCD could be larger

Warranty
1 year