Budget cameras are everywhere these days. Plenty of snapshot cameras cost less than $200, and you can even find some for around $150. The Canon PowerShot A460 is in that second category of inexpensive shooters. This basic, 5-megapixel camera comes in at the very low end of Canon’s PowerShot A-series of digital cameras. On paper, it looks like your average budget camera. Unfortunately, a lackluster design in addition to image-quality issues make it feel like Canon phoned this one in.

The chunky, brick-shaped A460 weighs 7.4 ounces with batteries and memory card, and at 1.6 inches thick, it’s a bit too fat to fit in your jeans. The minimalist control layout consists of four buttons and a zoom rocker integrated into a menu-navigating joy pad. This is an irritating design, and large thumbs will be prone to accidentally bumping the zoom in or out, or changing settings such as flash when using the zoom.

The PowerShot A460 digital camera comes equipped with eight Special Scene modes, including Portrait, Foliage, Snow, Beach, Fireworks, Indoor, Kids & Pets, and Night Snapshot. The My Colors functions offers “cool” photo effect, including Vivid, Neutral, Sepia, and Black & White and Custom color modes. What’s more, the PowerShot A460 is capable of recording VGA movies with sound for those times when a still picture simply can’t capture the moment.

The PowerShot A460 can deliver high-resolution images without requiring users to exert additional effort. The A460 uses Canon’s AiAF “Smart” autofocus system with Canon’s patented iSAPS intelligent scene analysis algorithm to determine optimum settings for focusing, exposure and white balance. The user simply snaps the shot with the push of a button.

The 5-megapixel A460 offers a 4X optical zoom, whereas most cameras at this price level have a 3X zoom. Plus, the A460 has three metering modes (evaluative, center-weighted, and spot); most competitors have only one. The function-set menus offer exceptionally quick access to settings and are easy to use. Key controls are grouped together in an intuitive list.

The zoom control is a little unusual–instead of having a separate wide-telephoto toggle, the camera uses the top and bottom positions of the four-way thumb control for zooming. The thumb control works well enough, though its function won’t be obvious to a first-time user, and its placement on the back makes the camera a bit awkward to operate one-handed.

The Canon PowerShot A550, introduced January 18, 2007, falls within the point-and-shoot category. While not as compact or stylish as the PowerShot ELPH cameras, the A550 represents a solid value in photographic quality and performance, offering photographers a number of distinct advantages. The suggested retail price of the Canon PowerShot A550 is $199.99, some $50 less than its predecessor, the A530.

Key upgrades over the Canon A550′s predecessor start with its higher resolution image sensor: 7.1 megapixels, up from 5 megapixels. The 2-inch LCD screen also edges out its 1.8-inch forerunner. To accommodate the larger file sizes generated by the greater resolution, the A550 is compatible with SDHC memory cards. The A550 is also more energy efficient. With rechargeable AA NiMH batteries, you can take up to 1,400 shots with the LCD off. That’s a whopping 400 shots more than the Canon PowerShot A530!

Canon includes a 16MB memory card along with the A550, which is quite small for a 7MP camera (it holds just four photos at the highest quality setting). So, unless you already have one sitting around, you’ll need to buy yourself a larger memory card. The A550 supports Secure Digital, MultiMedia, and the new SDHC memory card formats. I’d recommend picking up a 512MB card along with the camera. Buying a high speed card (50X or higher) is a good idea, as it does impact camera performance.

The A550 performed well in almost all of our Labs’ tests. After its brisk start-up time of 1.5 seconds, we could snap a shot once every 1.7 seconds, a great improvement over previous PowerShot A5x0 cameras. Unfortunately, with the onboard flash enabled, that time more than tripled to 4.9 seconds per shot. The camera’s shutter was responsive, lagging less than 0.5 seconds with our high-contrast target and a modest 1.2 seconds with our low-contrast target. Burst mode was also pleasantly fast, managing 51 full-resolution shots in 31.4 seconds for a rate of 1.6 frames per second.

Photos looked pretty good, though they’re marred by overprocessing and fringing in spots. Colors reproduce well, though indoor photos shot with automatic white balance come out very yellow, a common problem for most snapshot cameras. Noise is low up to ISO 400 sensitivity, where a fine grain starts to appear. Images are predictably noisy at ISO 800 sensitivity, with speckling damaging fine details and softening colors. ISO 800 is usually reserved for low-light and high-speed shooting, and everyday snapshots shouldn’t have many problems.

The Canon PowerShot A560 was introduced in January of 2007, as one of the lower-end models in the A-series lineup. It’s a near-twin upgrade of the A550 model that came onto the market slightly before it, but as we’ll see, the Canon A560 actually sports a number of worthwhile enhancements relative to the 550 model.

Though not quite small enough to slip into your jeans, the A560 is still comfortably compact. At 7.6 ounces and 1.7 inches thick, the camera can fit easily into most jacket pockets and bags. The A560′s body has the same L-shaped design found on most of Canon’s PowerShot A series, giving it a generous grip. Plus, its large buttons are comfortable to use, and they’re laid out logically along the back and the top of the camera.

The A560 looks fairly nondescript, but does offer some interesting features. Most notable among its attributes is its 35mm-to-140mm-equivalent 4X zoom lens, which gives it just a bit more range than the 3X lenses found on most budget cameras. Canon augments the 2.5-inch LCD screen with an optical viewfinder for shooting in dim light or tight quarters. The camera’s sensitivity reaches up to ISO 1600, a notch higher than the A550′s ISO 800. Another feature the A560 lords over the A550 is face detection. Canon buries the control in the menu system under the artificial intelligent autofocus setting (aiaf), rather than giving it a dedicated button as many of its competitors do, so don’t get confused. We found Canon’s face detection quick and accurate.

Like all PowerShot digital cameras, these newest additions to the A-series work seamlessly with Canon’s petite compact photo printers to deliver stunning high quality borderless prints. Consumers simply connect their PowerShot digital camera to a Canon compact photo printer — such as the SELPHY CP730 or PIXMA mini260 models. Press the bright blue Print/Share button, and within moments2, a brilliant, borderless 4×6-inch print begins to emerge. It is that simple. Canon’s compact Photo Printers are PictBridge compatible, so they work with PictBridge enabled digital cameras to provide users with excellent image quality and ease-of-use, especially when paired with a Canon digital camera.

As one of Microsoft’s Premier Launch Partners, Canon is proud to announce that all PowerShot cameras announced in 2007 are Certified for Windows Vista according to Microsoft standards, without any extra downloads or upgrades. Additionally, all current models are fully compatible with other operating systems including Windows XP and Mac OS X (Versions 10.2 – 10.4).

Canon’s acclaimed G-Series has a new top-of-the-line model, and serious photography enthusiasts have a lot to be excited about. A matte black, retro-hip design houses impressive capabilities and top core specifications, including 10.0 megapixel resolution and a powerful 6x optical zoom. Loaded with Canon’s latest and most advanced technologies, including an Optical Image Stabilizer for clear shots throughout the zoom range, PowerShot G7 is a camera to be reckoned with.

Since the introduction of the PowerShot G1 in 2000 (I bought one of those – ed.), Canon’s flagship G-series has stood at the very top of the semi-pro digital compact market, and has done a lot to help maintain Canon’s enviable reputation for quality and design. The previous camera in the series was the G6, launched in 2004, which featured a 7.1-megapixel sensor, a very fast f/2.0-3.0 4x zoom lens and RAW mode recording, as well as other useful features such as a tilt & twist LCD monitor, full manual exposure control, spot metering, interval timer and an IR remote control included as standard. It is a camera with a fantastic reputation, and very popular with serious enthusiast photographers.

It helps that the camera is pretty fast. Time to first shot is a brisk 1.5 seconds, and in bright light, a relatively quick focus helps keep the shutter lag to a manageable 0.5 second. In dim light, that increases to just under a second. Two shots in a row has a decent 1.7-second gap between, though taking flash recycle time into account bumps that up to a more modest 2.3 seconds. Continuous shooting seems fixed at 36 frames, regardless of resolution, and we couldn’t push the burst rate beyond 1.1 frames per second (fps), far less than the 2fps that Canon claims.