Canon Point and Shoot and Non-DSLR
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Canon PowerShot A710 IS First Impressions Review

by Richard Baguley
Published on October 09, 2006

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Manual Control Options     
The Canon A710 IS offers a full manual control mode, plus aperture and shutter priority modes for shooters who want to take more control of their image making. The manual controls are reasonably easy to use: in full manual mode, you adjust the aperture, then hold down the exposure compensation button to adjust the shutter speed. It’s a far from ideal system, but it works and is fine for occasional manual shooting. If you are going to be shooting in manual mode a lot, buy a digital SLR which provides for easier manual control.
 
Focus
Automatic Focus
The auto focus of the A710 IS finds the right focus spot relatively quickly, although it does seem to swim a bit in low light (although we were not able to test it fully in the confines of the Photokina conference hall). The nine-point through-the-lens auto focus system can focus as close as 0.39 inches in the macro mode and 1.8 ft normally.
 
Manual Focus
Manual focus is offered, but much like the manual metering mode, you wouldn’t want to use it too extensively: you set the auto focus mode to manual, then use the left and right directional keys to focus. It didn’t take long to zoom over the range, but there is no magnification of the image to show you when it is properly in focus.
 
Exposure
Exposure compensation of two stops up and down is available by using the exposure compensation button, and this can be adjusted in one third of a stop steps.  

Metering
The standard three metering modes are included: evaluative (where the camera analyzes the scene and picks the appropriate exposure), center weighted and spot metering. We were not able to test the efficacy of these different metering modes.

White Balance
As well as the standard auto mode, seven white balance presets are present: Daylight, Clouds, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, Underwater and Custom. The latter uses a white card (or other white object) to try and figure out the white balance.

ISO
The PowerShot A710 IS offers a full auto mode for ISO, as well as a mode that Canon calls High ISO Auto. This is for use in low-light situations where you can’t use flash: it pushes the ISO higher to make the most of the existing light. Manual settings are available for the following ISO ratings: 80, 100, 200, 400, and 800.
 
Shutter Speed
The shutter speed range is from 15 seconds to 1/2000th of a second. The longer exposure times are only available in the full manual mode.

Aperture
The aperture range of the lens is from f2.8 to f4.8. That’s a pretty short range that won’t provide much in the way of depth of field, but that’s not unusual in point-and-shoot cameras.

 
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