7. Canon PowerShot A720 IS Digital Camera

by Tony Celeste

We chose the Canon PowerShot A720 IS for the Holiday Buyer’s Guide for its powerful set of features offered at an affordable price. The PowerShot A720 provides 8 Megapixels of resolution, enough to print an 8x11” photo at 300 dpi, or save a Web image with dimensions of 3200x2400 pixels.

The PowerShot A720 also includes a powerful 6x optical zoom and 4x digital zoom, plus Canon’s Optical Image Stabilizer technology. Optical Image Stabilizer detects unintentional hand movements using miniature gyroscopic sensors, and then uses a corrective signal to reduce the effect of camera motion.

Canon makes shooting in any setting a breeze with the PowerShot A720’s mode dial, which can be set for nineteen shooting modes from fully manual to fully automatic.

Shooting Modes

Automatic, Semiautomatic, and Manual Modes

_*Auto: Fully automatic mode, _*P Program: Access advanced exposure features while shooting mostly automatically, _*Av Aperture-Priority: You define the aperture, camera chooses shutter speed, _*Tv Shutter-Priority: You define the shutter speed, camera chooses aperture, _*Manual: Fully manual control.

Scene Modes

_*Portrait _*Landscape _*Night Snapshot _*Indoor _*Kids & Pets _*Stitch Assist

Special Scene Modes

_*Night Scene _*Foliage _*Snow _*Beach _*Fireworks _*Aquarium _*Underwater

Movie Mode

_*Movie: Shoots VGA (640 x 480 at 30 fps) for up to 1 hour or 4 GB; also shoots QVGA & QQVGA.

The PowerShot A720 includes Canon’s DIGIC III processor, with features including Facial Detection Technology, red-eye correction, auto-sharpening in low light settings, and automatic focus, exposure, and white balance correction. The Canon A720 also features a 2.5” viewscreen, and uses inexpensive AA batteries instead of expensive “camera batteries”. The camera supports the PictBridge standard, allowing you to connect via USB cable directly to a PictBridge compatible printer, for completely automatic printing with no computer intervention required. The Canon PowerShot A720 IS sells for $194.94 - $315.00.