Canon PowerShot A550 - A surprise!

I recently realised that the low and mid-range dedicated digital camera markets are pretty much gone. The only brand-name manufacturer left is Kodak, who sell two models, the FZ45 and FZ55.

Facebook and Ebay show absolutely absurd prices for any kind of digital camera, no matter how old or low-end it used to be. The arse has fallen out of the second-hand low end film camera market at least thanks to a bunch of cheap new models appearing, but no such luck for digital cameras...

I checked Marketplace this morning assuming nothing would turn up but a nice man had listed a Canon A550 for the unusual but fair price of $15. A quick trip round the corner and I had it in my hands, working perfectly except for a lens cover that occasionally wouldn't retract and a missing spring on the battery door. In immaculate condition otherwise.

Given that it's easter and too hot to go anywhere, I went around the dry garden looking for some quick snaps. The handling is... only ok. There are no dedicated dials for exposure compensation, iso etc. The optical viewfinder is pretty inaccurate and so small that it's very hard to even look through, let alone line up a shot. The LCD is similarly awful; low resolution, impossible to see in full sun, and frequently shows a blown-out image. Perhaps it's fading with age?

There are dedicated buttons for ISO though, and exposure compensation can be changed by hitting the FN button once and moving left or right, which actually works ok in practice.

Once I got the photos onto the computer I was very surprised. I don't remember photos of this era looking this good. Granted, this was mid-morning on a lightly overcast day, but the colour reproduction and sharpness was very pleasing. The lens and sensor are of course tiny, but I was even able to get a slight DOF effect at the wide open aperture of F2.6

It does suffer pretty terribly in low-light, with significant noise appearing and plenty of blurriness as soon as the shutter has to slow down. I don't believe there is any image stabilisation with this model so any kind of zoom doesn't tend to work out well without a tripod.

The centre of the image is sharp but the quality really drops off at the edges. Theres pretty significant chromatic aberration and the bokeh shapes are very tight and small. Possibly attractive in the right circumstances though...

Given the right conditions this camera can still produce some great images. It's incredibly light-weight, is pretty efficient with it's AA batteries and has enough manual controls that some artistic options are opened up. For $15 it was a bargain! I hope to take it with me around the place for some random snaps.