Canon Powershot A580 Review

The Canon Powershot A580 is a 7 megapixel digital camera with a 4x optical zoom lens. It is a point and shoot model.

If you are looking for a cheaper digital camera that places the emphasis on picture quality rather than looks and style then the Canon Powershot A580 digital camera could be the one for you. It also offers one or two extra features over more basic point and shoot digital cameras.

Outdoor 1 (Medium Zoom)
This is a good start. From this picture I can see that the colours are likely to be well balanced, the camera able to cope with contrasting scenes and that pictures will be sharper than you would normally expect to find from a digital camera in this price range.

Outdoor 2 (No Zoom)
With the lens zoomed right out I am impressed by the fact that focusing does not fall away as you move towards the edges of the shot. This is an area where other cameras can produce an increasingly soft shot.

Outdoor 3 (Maximum Zoom)
Once again a Canon Powershot digital camera is able to produce a sharply focused shot where sharpness remains more or less constant across the photo.

Outdoor 4 (Building)
Looking into the area of the building that falls in the shade usually tells us more about the camera than looking at the brightly lit sunny areas. This is because it is harder for a camera to focus on the darker sections. The Powershot A580 has no problem and highlights the fact it is capable of producing sharp photos.

Outdoor Portrait
I especially like the colours in this photo. This helps to produce a warm feeling to the photo. Focusing is good and skin tones retain a natural feel to them.

Indoor Portrait with Flash
This is my favourite test shot. There is plenty of colour in the photo and the Powershot A580 has managed to keep the light produced by the flash unit to just the right level.

Indoor Portrait without Flash
Here we have another photo that works well. Although I prefer the indoor portrait with flash this photo suggests that while the light indoors is reasonable you should have the option between using flash and creating a more natural look.

Colours
The colours produced by this Canon digital camera are consistent throughout all my tests. Compared against other brands the strength of the colours produced by Canon digital cameras are somewhere in the middle rank.

Macro
This is a good quality macro shot when you take into account the price of the camera. You should be able to produce pleasing close ups in most situations.

ISO 400
A degree of noise does start to creep in, especially in the darker areas. Noise levels are acceptable though and do not detract too much from the quality of the photo or print. Even so I would only increase the ISO setting to 400 if conditions necessitated it.

ISO 1600
By the time we reach ISO 1600 picture quality is seriously struggling. I would only look to use this setting in extreme conditions and I had no other way of securing the shot.

Overall
No complaints at all. The Powershot A580 upholds the tradition of the Powershot series for producing very impressive photos.

Shutter lag times are roughly average when flash is not used. A single photo was captured in 0.35 seconds and five photos took 7.39 seconds. Turn the flash on and times slow a lot. This is something I have noticed with other Canon digital cameras in the Powershot range. A single photo with flash timed 1.12 seconds while five took 27.71 seconds. That really is quite poor.

You can compare this camera to other models by taking a look at the Shutter Lag Comparison Table.

The Powershot A580 is like a very cut down digital SLR camera. It has a good sized grip on the front to help you hold the camera steady. It is available in silver.

94.3 x 64.7 x 40.8mm

175g

Two AA batteries. Canon estimates you should be able to take around 220 shots with a standard set of batteries.

Canon supplies a 32mb SD memory card with the Powershot A580. This is enough for around 16 pictures. The camera is also compatible with SDHC memory cards.

Click here to save money on SD cards..

Good. This camera is easy enough to use. It can be operate as a simple point and shoot camera, but there are also some useful features hiding in the functions and menu areas.

Picture quality - value for money

Shutter lag times with flash

A cheaper and more basic entry level camera I like the Samsung Digimax S760.

No surprises. This is another Canon digital camera offering very good picture quality at a very reasonable price. If you want something relatively inexpensive, but effective then you could do a lot worse than pick up the Canon Powershot A580.

Front View

Back View

Top View

Sample Menu

Although every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the information on this site, please make sure you double check the feature set and specification at the point of purchase.

Canon Powershot A580