6. Speed

Using a timer, Powershot A80 showed itself to be in the average range of earlier models, such as the A60, A70 and Ixus.

It is thus around the global average if all digital cameras are taken into account. All in all, it is even faster than most of its competitors at powering up between photos, if you take care to deactivate the option for immediate review of the photos taken.

Colors

Like Canon's previous compact cameras, the automatic balancing of whites in this prototype was always inadequate. Indoors, red soon dominates in photographs. Fortunately, the prerecorded balances and the completely manual always make it possible to create much more faithful shots. But you need to get into the habit of exiting the fully automatic mode, activating the function key, going down a notch on the balance, then selecting the right mode of the seven offered: auto, natural light, cloudy, tungsten, fluo, fluo H and customized.

It may seem a little unwieldy, but you soon get used to it, especially if you take advantage of modes C1 and C2 (using the selection wheel on top of the camera) to define poorly-lit scenes, for instance, or for taking shots indoors at night.

An extreme case to show how serious the white balance problem is:

On the left, the completely automatic mode is show, and as you can see, the A80 does really badly. On the right, the color balance has been switched to Tungsten.

Don't assume that this weakness is specific to Canon. With a few rare exceptions, not a single digital camera is able to balance whites perfectly. Better to be happy that the best color balance is capable of creation by adjusting the settings manually.