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For full-frame digital SLR or film users, the 20mm ƒ/2.8 shows off its poorer performance issues, especially for sharpness and light falloff. Whether this performance is poor however, depends on your point of view; if you’re looking for a lens which isolates a centrally-located subject by means of sharpness and light falloff, the lens does it spectacularly. If you need even light distribution and even sharpness, the 20mm prime will disappoint, especially at ƒ/2.8. At other apertures, you have a better chance of getting what you need.

“While certainly not the thinnest camera in the world, the Canon PowerShot A720 IS is compact enough to meet the portable requirements of most shutterbugs hungering for a camera they can stow on their person and keep out of mind until it’s time to capture a moment. If tight jeans are your thing, the A720 at 3.83-by-2.64-by-1.65 inches and weighing a tad over seven ounces, pocketing the camera may be challenging, but for flannel shirt types like myself, it will nestle comfortably in a breast pocket.”

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One of the latest “A” series models from Canon this year, the PowerShot A470 is one of the best deals available for an entry-level digital camera. The combination of excellent quality images, increased performance from previous models and the all around ease of use makes this camera perfect for anyone looking for their first digital camera or someone needing a simple camera to keep for use on a moments notice. With an estimated price of US$130 or less, the A470 is almost impossible to beat when looking for quality and affordability. 

“The Canon SD1100 is physically attractive, but its images aren’t always as beautiful. Images look good when taken in bright light with the ISO set low, but images taken with high ISO settings are noisy and can look somewhat unpleasant. They are hardly suitable even in low-resolution formats for blogs and e-mails – much less for prints that will sit in an album for years to come.

The $249 price tag is inexpensive for a trendy 8-megapixel Canon digital camera, let alone one that has an optical image stabilization system. But the image quality is the big trade-off here; in anything other than bright lighting, you get images that have a serious amount of noise. Whether the portability of the camera is an acceptable trade-off for this is up to you, but it does detract from the attractiveness of the camera.”

“Ultimately, while neither groundbreaking nor particularly inspiring, it’s difficult not to be impressed with the A720 IS. It’s a good little camera with a simple and consistent user interface that allows the user to take good photos for a very reasonable amount of money. These may sound like the qualities that all compact cameras should offer by default yet there are still many manufacturers that struggle with these basics. As long as their expectations are not utterly unreasonable, it’s hard to imagine anyone being disappointed with the A720IS; an unpretentious little thing.”