Canon A480

Manual Controls

As with many other budget-oriented point and shoots, the A480 doesn't have too much in the way of manual controls. There are exposure adjustments along a fixed scale from -2 to +2 and 3 white balance evaluation modes – Evaluative, Center Weighted Average, and Spot. In the Long Shutter scene mode, you do have a number of presets to adjust shutter speed. Beyond this, there are no manual controls to adjust the aperture or focus or exhibit finer control over shutter speed.

Focus

The A480 has an auto-focus lens and no manual focus options are available. It does have a face-detection feature that is on by default which will detect facial brightness during auto focusing. There an auto-focus assist light that will automatically illuminate in low light conditions, though you can turn this off in the global settings menu.

ISO

When in Program shooting mode, ISO sensitivity can be set at 6 speeds between 80 and 1600, in addition to the default Auto setting.

White Balance

In addition to the default Auto White Balance preset, the A480 offers 6 presets: Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, and a Custom setting. This Custom setting is simply one that applies the automatic white balance evaluation to your best suit your current lighting conditions - each time you use it, it will adjust white balance accordingly, saving nothing to memory between each use.

Metering

The A480 has 3 metering modes in Program mode - Evaluative, Center Weighted, and Spot. A note in the online specs indicates that the metering frame is fixed to the center in Spot mode.

Shutter Speed

The A480's shutter speed ranges from 1/2000 second all the way up to 15 seconds. These ultra-slow shutter speeds can be set when you use the Long Shutter scene mode where you're offered choices from 1 second to 15 seconds.

Aperture

The A480 automatically sets the aperture to a minimum of f/5.8 at maximum zoom and at f/3.0 at the widest angle setting, with no manual controls available.

Image Stabilization

The A480 does not have any image stabilization features.

Picture Quality & Size Options

The A480 offers 6 still image picture size and quality options:
• 3648 x 2736 (Large)
• 2816 x 2112 (Medium 1)
• 2272 x 1704 (Medium 2)
• 1600 x 1200 (Medium 3/Date Stamp)
• 640 x 480 (Small)
• 3648 x 2048 (Widescreen)

Picture Effects

The A480 has 5 picture effects that can be applied during image capture: Vivid, Neutral, Sepia, Black & White, Custom. There are no effects that can be applied to pictures that have already been captured.