Canon A1100 IS Digital Camera Review

Canon A1100 IS

Digital Camera Review

The A1100 IS is a 12.1 megapixel digital camera from Canon featuring a 4x zoom and a 2.5-inch LCD screen. It doesn't have too many features to set it apart from the crowd, but it is reasonably priced at $199 MSRP. It serves as a minor update to last years A100 IS, which captured a maximum 10-megapixel image. The A1100 IS also has a better body design, offering a rounded grip on the right side of the camera. This design isn't perfect, however, because it still doesn't provide very good handling. The camera has very few manual controls. Instead, it's loaded with scene modes and automatic settings like face detection, self-timer controls, and optical image stabilization.
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Controls  
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Manual Controls


While the Canon A1100 IS has plenty of scene modes and automatic settings to keep the curious point-and-shooter happy, it lacks most precise manual controls that more experienced users will crave. Program mode is the closest thing the camera has to a manual mode and it only allows you to adjust ISO sensitivity, white balance, image size, color effects, and autofocus method.

There are no manual controls for shutter speed, aperture, or focus. Keep this in mind if you're the type of  person who likes to play around with traditional camera settings—as you won't find them anywhere on the A1100 IS.

Focus


Autofocus can be set to center or Face AiAF, which will focus in on detected faces. No manual focus is available on the camera. An orange autofocus assist lamp helps focus in low-light settings.

ISO


In program mode the ISO sensitivity can be set to auto, 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, or 1600. Scene and auto modes each adjust ISO automatically and have specific settings assigned to each. The ISO 3200 scene mode boosts the ISO sensitivity to its maximum (which is higher than you can set the sensitivity manually).

White Balance


White balance presets include auto, day light, cloudy, tungsten, fluorescent, fluorescent H, and manual. Manual white balance is easy to use, just select the feature and push set when the camera is focused on a white or neutral image.

Metering


The camera has three auto exposure settings: evaluative, center weighted average, and spot. There is also an option for manual exposure adjustment that offers a range of -2 to +2 increments.

Shutter Speed


There is no dedicated manual shutter speed control on the A1100 IS, but Canon lists the shutter speed range as 15 - 1/1600 of a second. To activate very slow shutter speeds, the camera must be in the Long Shutter scene mode which can be set from 1 - 15 seconds.

Aperture


The A1100 IS also has no manual aperture control, but the maximum aperture capable on the camera is f/2.7.

Image Stabilization


The camera offers optical image stabilization and the feature can be set to continuous, shoot only, and panning.

Picture Quality & Size Options


Images can be taken in the following sizes: 4000 x 3000 (Large), 3264 x 2448 (Medium 1), 2592 x 1944 (Medium 2), 1600 x 1200 (Medium 3/Date Stamp), 640 x 480 (Small), and 4000 x 2248 (Widescreen). The camera also has quality settings of fine and normal for each size.

Picture Effects


Color settings on the A1100 IS are vivid, neutral, sepia, black & white, and custom. When custom is selected you can manually fine tune your image's contrast, sharpness and saturation. Eachof those three custom options have 5 increments of control.

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