Canon PowerShot A3000 IS

Viewfinder (0.00)

There is no viewfinder on this camera: all images are previewed through the LCD screen.

Display (3.90)

The A3000 IS comes with a 2.7-inch LCD screen with a resolution of 230k pixels. That is a little on the low side, and this is reflected in a slightly grainy look to images on the screen. Colors look good, though, and the screen is pretty bright. You might need to shield it in direct sunlight, but it works well in most lighting conditions.

Flash (4.00)

The small flash of the A3000 IS is located just above and to the right of the zoom lens. We found that the flash produced pretty even light, but didn’t have a lot of power to penetrate into the darkness. Canon claims a range of up to 13.1 feet for the flash, but this seems a little optimistic: we found that it didn’t adequately illuminate objects beyond 7 or 8 feet away.

Lens (3.50)

The lens of the A3000 is a 4x zoom model, with a focal lenght range of 6.2 to 24.8mm. Translated into the equivalent of a 35mm film camera, that’s a focal length of 35 to 140mm. That represents a decent range for general use: 35mm is wide enough to shoot a decent group portrait, while the 140mm telephoto will allow you to get reasonably close to the action. However, it won’t provide the close-in shots that you might want for a football game or other sport.

The aperture range of the camera is also rather limited, going from f/2.7 to f/8 at the widest zoom setting and f/5.6 to f/16 at the telelphoto end. The lack of a manual aperture control makes this less of an issue, though.

We also found that the auto focus mechanism of this camera was a little noisy: the lens makes an annoying buzzing noise as it focuses, which is quite distracting.

Zoom Ratio Examples
6.2 mm	13.8 mm	24.8 mm

Battery (5.00)

Power is stored in the NB-8L battery that comes with the camera. This can hold 740 mAh of charge, and Canon claims a battery life of around 240 shots, which seems to be about right based on our informal tests. At the very least, it should be enough to get you through a weekend of shooting without needing a recharge.

Memory (3.00)

Images shot by the A3000 can be stored on an SD/SDHC card inserted above the battery. This camera supports SD, the newer SDHC and the latest SDXC memory card standard, which allows for memory cards that can hold up to 2TB of data. At present, the highest capacity SDXC cards available hold 64GB of data. There is no internal memory on this camera that can be used to store photos: the memory card is the only location available.

Jacks, Ports & Plugs (3.00)

There is only one port on the A3000, which is under a cover on the left side of the camera. This single port doubles as a USB and analog video/audio connection with the included cables. If you loose the included USB cable, it can be replaced with any USB cable that has a USB mini plug. There is no HDMI output on this camera, and it cannot output digital audio or video.