Nice camera, except for the red-eye
Strengths:Easy to use, lots of automatic and manual settings, clear close shots, good indoor close shots
Weaknesses:Consistent red-eye in every picture where flash is used, lots of noise in photos where zoom was used.
Posted Jan 18, 2007 - I am no newbie to digital cameras. I've been using them for quite a while. I finally decided that it was time to upgrade from my aging 2 MP Vivitar camera to a newer camera. After much reading, it appeared as though Canon was the benchmark to which all others were compared. I could hardly find a bad review of the Canon cameras. So, I went ahead and set my sights on the new 8 MP Canon a630. I saved-up some money, and got one.
I was immediately impressed with it's ease of use, and found it very fun to use. I thought I had a winner. That is, until I uploaded the pictures to my computer. That's when the dreaded red-eye made itself known (you couldn't see the red-eye when reviewing pictures on the built-in LCD).
I found that in every shot where the flash was used (even in red-eye reduction mode), that red-eye was dominant. I say dominant, because it was the most dominant thing in the picture. The red-eye was so dominating, that it was practically the only detail you noticed. In-fact, in many shots, the red-eye actually looked like glowing eyes that were hovering above the face. Like hovering red balls of light.
Oddly, I found that even in shots that were side profiles (where the eyes were facing away from the camera), that red-eye would still appear. This seemed odd since the shots were directly from the side of the person and their face was away from the camera. So, there was no direct visibility of their eyes. As a matter of fact, from that camera angle, their pupils were not even visible. But, oddly red-eye prevailed in the picture. It looked like a glowing red light ball hovering right against their face.
Even stranger, was that distance made no difference. I could photograph someone from 30 feet away, and red-eye was dominant. We tried again with a side profile from about 30 feet away, and again you could see red-eye (although the camera angle would not have even shown their eyes).
Now, to compare this fairly, I took these shots in the exact same environment that I previously used for my other camera. And, the indoor shots were even taken in the exact same lighting as my other camera.
With my old Vivitar 2 MP, I have taken nearly 2 thousand shots (stored on my computer), and have not ever had a single one show red-eye.
But, with the Canon a630, I took 60 shots, and only 5 of them didn't have any red-eye. Those 5 were taken with outside light and no flash.
Even worse, was the process of removing red-eye from the photos on the computer. The red-eye was so bad, that I had to run the 55 photos through 4 different programs to re-touch the eyes and make them look semi-normal.
So, the Canon definitely does not favor well in comparison to my old Vivitar. So, I took the a630 back for a refund, and have gone back to using my old Vivitar. I only kept the Canon for about 2 days. The store had a re-stocking fee and very limited return policy.
At this point, it would appear as though the new Canon cameras need some work to compare to other cheaper cameras from 5 years ago.
The one nice thing I can say about the camera, is that it takes beautiful close-up shots if you are in outdoor environments. Those shots turned-out beautiful. The focus on the subject was perfect. But, it does produce some artifacts in the surrounding details around the subject. My Vivitar would focus all of the details and produce a complete picture of the subject in their environment. The Canon provided only rough details of the environment, and perfect details on the subject.
As for distance shots, I found that the Canon's built-in optical zoom was good to about 4 or 5 feet. Beyond that, and the noise in the picture was terrible. Zooming-in on something or someone about 15 feet away would produce nothing but a blurry picture.
It's detail in "indoor" and "night" modes were not even worth taking the picture. Those looked like a dark room with lots of fuzz and the subject was a rough outline. The photos taken in "auto" mode in the same light looked much better.
I hope this helps to save someone the trouble of losing their money on a "re-stocking fee" or dealing with returns.
Good luck to you shoppers out there.
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Unexpectedly Good Pictures
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Beware the E18 Error!
Small size compare to SLR
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