I bought my Canon Powershot A40 (and not A50) in June this year (Year 2002). I was travelling in the US, and one of my collegues told me that Best Buy was a great place for electronic products, and that I could buy any electronic product at 20% to 30% cheaper than the prices prevailing in India.
I visited the Best Buy Store at Detroit (State: Michigan) and checked out all the digital cameras there. My requirements were ---
a) Be able to take 50 to 60 pictures at one go, without having to download the pics into any computer
b) Most of my pictures would be of ordinary post-card or A4 size and I did not require larger pictures
c) Both outdoor as well as indoor pictures. Since I belong to a South Indian family, we have these frequent festivals where families get together, and we take group pictures. Besides, we have these marriage outings as well, where its convinient to carry your own camera so that you dont have to depend on anyone else to send you copies of the pictures that were taken.
d) I have a Personal computer at home, and so, I wanted a camera which would allow me to transfer soft copies of the snaps directly into my PC so that I can mail them out to friends & relatives without any hassles.
If I remember right, the store had digital cameras from Canon, HP, Panasonic and a couple of other leading brands. I dont recall them all, but the salesman at the counter recommended the Canon A40 highly, after hearing out my requirements. I am not sure if he got a higher cut (commission) by selling Canon pieces, but he seemed to be completely sold on this particular make.
Here are the specs of the camera --
1) Its a 2.0 Megapixel Camera with 3X optical Zoom lens
2) Inbuilt 8MB memory Card (which can hold upto 35 - 50 photos, depending on the resolution that you use for taking the pics)
3) Comes with a USBP cable which connects the camera to your desktop / laptop
4) Comes with its own propreitary software called Arcsoft Camera Suite...its more like MS Photo editor, and this software allows you to transfer and edit the photos on your computer. It comes in a CD form, and can be easily installed on your computer within 15 minutes.
5) User friendly manual, which explains all the features of the camera
This camera even allows you to take movie clips of upto 45 seconds including sound. More like a mini candy-cam.
The price? Well....I paid $300 for the camera. I then bought an additional memory card (64MB) for $40. This additional memory allows me to take almost 150 photos at one go, without having to download or empty the card. I then bought a battery charger for $40 and a few rechargeable batteries. The total bill came to $400, which is a neat price to pay for this camera. I bought the battery charger because I was told that ordinary pencil sized batteries last for one hour, at best. This is because the camera comes with a LCD display at the back, which allows you to view the picture before clicking...I am used to seeing this kind of an LCD display mostly in handycams.
One thing that I didnt' like about this camera is when picutres are taken with the flash on. Its got an automatic flash feature, and if the lighting is not good, the flash gets activated on its own. While this auto-feature is good, the picture quality when the flash is on, is not that good. The object in the picture (this could be a person or an object...say, a painting) appears to be too bright, and the rest of the background appears to be too dark when you take a picture using flash on this camera. That's the only sad part about this camera. Outdoor pictures come out fantastic....you seldom use the flash for an outdoor picture, unless the weather is very gloomy or if it is in the night. Its been 7 months since I bought the camera. Its not given me a single problem. I have used it extensively...taken more than 400 snaps so far, without any issue. Most of them have been downloaded into my home PC. I haven't had the time to take a print of any of these pics so far. I am told that most photo shops charge around Rs 25 for taking 4 prints of any normal postcard sized photo. I have not yet tried taking the prints, but I am told that the quality of the hardcopy pictures are a lot superior than the conventional photos that we get from the film cameras.
These days, you get small printers, specifically for printing digital photos at home. They are really cute and handy.....most of them are portable, but I dont see why people would want to carry it around anyway. Recently, I checked up on the cost of such printers....the one that I would have liked to have bought would've cost me around Rs 20,000 which way way beyond my budget. Besides, I would have to buy photo stationary, which is another pain. I dont remember the specifications of these printers since I did not want to buy one anyway. But a crude working tells me that having a printer at home to print your digital photos is almost as expensive as getting them printed at a studio like Fotoflash. Also, you dont have to take the pains of getting the printout right...I expect the allignment of the photos would be screwed up if you tried doing this on your own at home.
Finally, I have to mention regarding the accessories for the camera. I did not buy any leather cover in the US since they were expensive. I bought one on MG Road...I think the name of the shop is GG Wells'. Its close to Lake View's...and if you can't find it, ask the guy at GK Vale, and he would direct you to this place. Its also close to the LIC building at the MG Road - St Mark's Road junction. I think I paid around Rs 100 for the cover, but I dont remember the exact price that I paid. Bestbuy (the store in the US where I bought the camera) had water-proof covers for this camera. This would allow you to take the camera underwater...upto 100 ft, I think and take underwater pictures. So, if you are into taking pictures of the life under water, you could buy this water-proof cover. But hold onto your chairs...the price for this cover was almost $250. Close to the price of the camera itself!!!
So, folks...bottomline is that this camera is a great buy. But I guess by the time you read this review, cameras with better configuration....such as 3.0 Megapixel or even 4.0 Megapixel would have hit the market at the same price. By the way, I forgot to mention that I saw a camera of similar configuration, up for sale in one of these showrooms on Brigade Road...it was costing close to Rs 28,000, while I paid $400 for the complete solution. So, I guess, I did eventually manage to get this for 25% cheaper price. I dont think this was a Canon camera, but if I remember right, it was a reaonably reputed company's camera.
Also, I forgot to mention that Bestbuy was offering post-sale warranty for upto 3 years for about 10% of the camera cost. This is a world-wide warranty...meaning, you can get it serviced anywhere in the world....free of cost, including spares replacement. They claimed to have a dealer network in all prominant cities across the world, including Bangalore. They had a brochure which showed a list of such dealers....but my collegue who was with me while I was shopping adviced me not to go for this post-sales warranty since the product was very stable anyway, and was unlikely to give problems. Besides, places like GK Vale's repair digital cameras these days, without any hassles. Apparently, the technology is now very common.
So, folks...happy clicking. And yes, do buy a Canon Camera. Its rugged and reliable.
