Canon Powershot A540 Digital Camera (6.0MP, 2816x2112, 4x Opt, SD/MMC)

Canon PowerShot A540

Powershot A540 Digital Camera (6.0MP, 2816x2112, 4x Opt, SD/MMC) Review, by Richard Baguley July 26, 2006

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• Latest User Reviews 4 reviews
• Reviewed by: dcxdan

  Duration of ownership: 10 Months

  Strengths: Fantasticly sharp photos, very easy to use.

  Weaknesses: Very, Very, Very bad battery life.

  Overall: Buy a Nikon L11 camera. I gave up trying to carry my Canon A540 around to take impromptu photos, the battery would go dead within a few days. I bought a Nikon L11, put the alkaline batteries that came with the camera in, and it has been going strong for over 3 weeks. The Nikon also has a setting for what kind of battery you are using - alkaline, NiMH recharable ot lithium.

• Reviewed by: teemy

  Duration of ownership: 2 Months

  Strengths: good

• Reviewed by: Prerak

  Duration of ownership: 2 Months

  Strengths: Manual Features, Various modes, quality photos, Flash, Micro mode and all other features.

  Weaknesses: High refresh time if flash is used, not soft switching between play and display mode, not slim in look.

  Overall: I am fully satisfied with this product because I have been looking for a camera in my budget having all manual features since a year. Finally I got to this one and tried. Really awesome! Have compared results with other SLRs and digital cameras and felt better enough. No product is complete and this is not an exceptions but worth to buy it as a first camera if having photography as one of your hobbies. ...

• Reviewed by: NuGu

  Duration of ownership: 5 Months

  Strengths: Reasonably priced. Compact camera size with a generous display size. Uses off-the-shelf AA batteries. Excellent battery life (I'll explain later). Video quality exceeds that of my digital camcorder. Photos taken exhibit good color and contrast and are well exposed.

  Weaknesses: Canon has adopted a single door design which is used to gain access to both the memory card and the two AA batteries. Flash recycle times can be a little long.

  Overall: This is my third and forth Canon camera purchase for personal use. I purchased one for myself and one for my son who travels a lot with his high school band. I have previously owned a Canon A40 and an A85, both of which still work fine, but I wanted to upgrade. There have been over 2000 photos and numerous video clips taken with these cameras, including a Thanksgiving parade in Chicago and a couple of Disney parades. This feat was accomplished with one 4-pack of lithium AA batteries for each camera, since my NMiH charger died soon after I bought the cameras. How much you use your camera to review photos and videos will shorten batteryl life on all cameras. DO NOT USE ALKALINE BATTERIES IN ANY DIGITAL CAMERA. You will be disappointed unless you only take a few photos a month. Lithium or NMiH are the ONLY way to go.

• Reviewed by: mtcljy

  Strengths: easy to use, good picture quality

  Weaknesses: shot-to-shot wait time too long, short battery life

  Overall: I've had this camera for a while. In general, I like it partly because it's my first digital camera and partly because it's easy to use for an amateur like me. However, I'm convinced that either there's something wrong with the design or it's just the one I bought was defective. I don't know if this has happened to other people who have this model, but the lens cover of mine was broken about 10 months after I bought it. I have always taken care of this camera well and never let it fall or bump into anything. It just happened all of a sudden--the lens cover only opened up half way or not at all when I turned the camera on, and it didn't close completely when I turned the camera off. Now I end up having to open or close it using my fingers every time I use the camera. It's very incovenient. Since I paid over $200 for it, I was hesitant to spend more to get it fixed when the problem started. In fact, there are a lot of newer, cheaper digital cameras out there now. I might as well buy a brand new one by a different maker.

• Reviewed by: omarkoch

  Strengths: Fast Autofocus, almost no shutter lag, optical viewfinder included, small but still easy to hold when shooting, good color accuracy, can add other lenses, external flash is available,4x optical zoom.

  Weaknesses: The big LCD is low resolution, but this is not that important, the add on flash is proprietary, you can't use just any external flash, no other weakneses that I noticed.

  Overall: I purchased the Canon A540 in December 2006 after extensive research in the Web, I liked all the reviews I read about it and I was not disappointed when I started using it. If you decide to buy this camera, you will need to purchase a high speed SD card to be able to realize its full speed potential (I would say at least 60x , 150x even better). Unfortunately I lost the camera on a trip to Boston when it fell under the seat of my rental car after a near collision on the highway when I was on my way back to the airport, I liked the camera so much that I bought another one to replace my lost unit. I highly recommend this camera for a person looking in the under 200 dollar price range.

• Reviewed by: Meme4tch

  Strengths: love the pictures

  Weaknesses: short battery life

  Overall: I contacted Canon thinking I had a defective camera, but from what I've read, it seems to be common. I had purchased the camera for a short trip to San Diego and drove myself crazy on a 4 day trip needing to buy batteries and carry them around with me. It seems the more pictures I took the shorter the batteries lasted. Is that normal? It doesn't seem like it would be worthwhile for me to hold on to this camera if I have to keep buying batteries for it. How reliable is that? I also noticed they sell an optional charger, is that better? Which battery lasts the longest? PLEASE HELP!

• Reviewed by: Webtools

  Strengths: Lightweight, AA battery, 4x zoom and 2.5' LCD

  Weaknesses: Plastic surface

  Overall: For the money value, this is worthy. Picture quality is based on Canon, nice and sharp. A lot pro functions seen on higher rank Canon's. Strongly recommand for beginners.

• Reviewed by:

  Strengths: compact size, intuitive use on basic settings, rechargeable AA batteries

  Weaknesses: manual is difficult to decipher, zoom overshoots way fast

  Overall: I bought this camera 4 months ago to replace my venerable 2.1MP Olympus D-510 Zoom (which still takes pictures but the LCD won't stay on). The A540 is more compact and a little lighter, making it easy to carry on a purse or larger pocket (not a shirt-pocket, sorry guys). The basic Auto settings are intuitive, but it took me a long time to figure out from the manual that the fill-flash is only available in some settings (the manual does not say which ones). Still, when we needed another camera for our small business, I surveyed the options and ended up with another A540 as best-buy for our needs. It's worth it even if I have to sit down with the manual and burn through a set of those rechargeable batteries just figuring out the settings!