Canon PowerShot A580

Pros: Great pictures for little investment ; intuitive operation ; advanced face detection for its class

Cons: Feels, looks cheap ; bulky ; slow shot-to-shot performance, especially with flash

Verdict: It's slow and unglamorous, but the Canon PowerShot A580 captures good pictures at a low price.

Cons: Feels and looks cheap ; bulky ; slow shot-to-shot performance, especially with flash

Review summary: If you're looking for a cheap and cheerful point-and-shoot compact, the Canon PowerShot A580 could be right up your street. With its cute, plastic yet sturdy body and running on AA batteries, it features image stabilisation and 15-second long shutter ...

Pros: Accessible controls ; decent images

Cons: Lacks panache ; vanilla feature set ; no optical image stabilisation

Verdict: The chunky, cheery styling isn't to our taste, but the friendly price, accessible controls and respectable image quality pull it out of the bag for this unsophisticated and easy-to-use point-and-shoot

Review summary: Designed for the beginner who wants a little more zoom than the typical 3x zoom entry-level camera provides, the Canon PowerShot A580 offers a 4x lens with fully automatic or semi-automatic settings, as well as 16 easily selectable shooting modes

Pros: DIGIC III image processor just like the big boys ; Motion detection to adjust ISO for best exposure ; Facial detection for portraits and to confirm those smiles afterwards ; Good body design, easy to hold and lightweight ; Good color saturation ; Good ...

Cons: Difficult battery/card compartment latch ; Burned out highlights with blooming ; Poor digital zoom ; Flash washes out extreme Macro shots ; High barrel distortion ; High chromatic aberration at wide angle ; Soft corners at wide angle ; High contrast ...

Verdict: The Canon PowerShot A580 has an eight megapixel CCD imager coupled with a Canon-branded 4x optical zoom lens. Images are framed on the 115,000 pixel 2.5-inch LCD display, or using the optical viewfinder. Photos and movies are stored on SD / MMC cards, ...