4. Shooting And Saving

The A620 offers the traditional choice between single shot and continuous shooting modes. With the latter option, the rate is close to 2 frames per second, which is very good for a compact! The shutter latency of digicams - a problem that is well-known and often criticized - is actually very low here. You'll be able to shoot quickly without much problem, provided that you take the time to learn to use all of your camera's capabilities. The self-timer features both 2-second and 10-second delay options, but also has a custom adjustment of up to 30 seconds. It also allows you to take several shots in a row.

Video is captured in motion JPEG AVI format with mono sound, and you have a choice of three resolutions - 640x480, 320x240 or 160x120 - and speeds of 30 or 15 fps; in 320x240 mode you can also shoot at 60 fps. Video files can be as large as 1 GB, but obviously for that you'll need to use a fast memory card, or recording will stop once the buffer memory is full.

Files can be saved to SD cards in JPEG format only, which may give really demanding amateurs pause. Fortunately, you do have a choice of three compression levels. The lowest level creates files of an average size of 3 to 4 MB that show very few JPEG artifacts, and so we don't feel this is really a limitation for a model in this price range.

Image Viewing

All standard viewing functions are available; this includes the ability to rotate images, and also to record a little audio "memo" to accompany each photo. On the other hand, the slide show function has only a set rate of 3 seconds per image, which reduces its usefulness. As on most current cameras, the A620 features DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) printing functions.

Basic display showing essential information

Pressing the "Display" button gives you important information about your shot.