Connectivity
Software (7.0)
I can’t remember the last time I was pleased and surprised by the software included with a camera, so it’s a delight to say that Canon has included software with both an appealing interface and some unusual and useful features.
Canon’s ZoomBrowser EX (for Windows) or ImageBrowser (for Mac OSX) allow users to sort images, touch up color a bit, crop them, make slide shows, email images and print them. You can print several images on a single page, enlarging and shrinking them individually. The programs also print index pages, jamming lots of images and their filenames on a single sheet. They make it easy to open a selected image in another, more capable, editing program such as Photoshop. The feature sets so far is solid, and they are well-executed, but what really gets me is the “Time Tunnel” interface in the Mac software.
The Time Tunnel takes advantage of the fact that most people, certainly most snapshooters, organize their images by date. If you’re looking for a particular image in a large collection, it’s likely that if you look at any given image in that set, you’ll be able to say whether you took that one before or after you took the one you’re looking for. Rather than creating an interface that just scrolls up and down, Time Tunnel offers a three-dimensional effect. Its window shows several rectangles of decreasing sizes all centered in the screen, and suggesting a vanishing point in the middle. The images are displayed along the edges of each rectangle. The images on the bigger, outer rectangles are largest. The images on the smaller rectangles toward the middle of screen get proportionately smaller. The controller interface looks like a jog dial – slide the cursor up, and the rectangles and images on them are animated – they get larger and spread out, until they leave the frame. At the same time, new boxes and images appear in the center of the frame, too small to read at first, but growing as they go. Slide the cursor down, and the reverse happens. It’s actually a refreshing and intuitive interface. It seemed to be a bit faster to search than a standard window that scrolls vertically, but it could be that it just seemed that way, because it’s more enjoyable.
Both the Macintosh and the Windows software packages also include PhotoStitch software, which assembles panoramic images from mosaic of overlapping images. It’s particularly useful for landscapes that spread wider than a camera can take in. Think the Grand Canyon, Machu Picchu, the Great Wall of China, the Valley of Kings, Victoria Falls, or Graceland.
To use PhotoStitch to create a single picture that embraces the whole of someplace like that, the user takes several pictures of the scene, all from one spot, but turning slightly for each picture, so that the pictures, if laid side by side, would show the entire vista. The software melds the images together to produce a single image. The system works best if the images overlap significantly. The camera offers a special setting for shooting the individual pictures, apparently tagging them somehow with information the software can use. The software is not just for horizontal panoramas. It will combine images both horizontally and vertically. Because the software can’t always handle images in a convincing way, it offers a means of editing the seams between pictures. There are more powerful programs for stitching images, but PhotoStitch is fun. It’s likely to suit A520 users who have an itch to make a panorama.
Jacks, Ports, Plugs (6.0)
The A520 sports a USB port, an A/V port for display on televisions (it offers both NTSC format for US televisions and PAL for most other places), and a jack for an AC adapter, which is not included with the camera. The AC adapter would most likely be useful for folks who plan to run slide shows on a television.
Direct Print Options (7.0)
The PowerShot A520 is PictBridge and DPOF compatible, which means that no computer is necessary to make prints. PictBridge and DPOF are industry standards for photo printing, so it’s likely that any printer or photo lab that can handle digital files will be able to handle pictures from an A520. The camera can flag individual images or groups of images for printing, indicate the number of copies to be printed, specify that an index print be made, and indicate that both full-size prints and index prints be made. These data are written onto the memory card, and can be used with or without the camera – they’ll work if you simply slide the card into a printer with an SD card slot, or if your photo finisher downloads you files.
The A520 does not offer in-camera cropping and editing, as some cameras now do.
Battery (5.0)
The PowerShot A520 requires two AA batteries. Though Canon supplies the camera with standard alkaline cells, the manual says rechargeable NiMH batteries are recommended. Trust the manual – the included batteries didn’t last more than an hour or two during testing. Testing is definitely more taxing than regular operation, but digital cameras still use lots of power. Get a couple sets of batteries, whatever camera you use. Although it’s typical for cameras in this price range to use standard AA cells, many more elaborate digital cameras have proprietary batteries that typically last far longer than AAs between recharges. Battery life may be a reason to consider a more expensive camera than the A520.
Memory (4.0)
The A520 does not have memory built-in, but it comes with a 16MB MMC card. The camera accepts SD/MMC cards, and most users will find a couple more cards useful. The 16MB card will only hold seven images at the camera’s maximum quality setting.
Other Features (6.0)
Tethered Mode - Windows and Macintosh computers can remotely operate the shutter of the PowerShot A520 via the USB connection. While this feature is pretty common on professional-level digital SLRs, it’s unusual on a consumer camera like the A520 and provides users the opportunity to snag all sorts of creative shots from the home computer--if you've got a long enough cable and place you’re A520 intelligently, you could get a shot of the neighborhood skunk tipping over the garbage cans or the eggs in a bird's nest hatching, for example. Using this setup, the user can control most camera settings, including focus exposure, zoom, resolution and flash, and it shows a live display of the LCD viewfinder.
Self-Timer - The A520’s self-timer can be sent to a range of delays from two to ten seconds. It also allows the user to set the camera to wait from zero to ten seconds, and then take from one to ten pictures.
Auxiliary Lenses – Though they are not included in the A520 kit, Canon’s auxiliary lenses add to the camera’s capability and appeal. The wide angle lens changes the camera’s widest angle of view from a 35mm lens equivalent to a 25mm, which is a significant change. The telephoto lens takes the camera from 140mm equivalent to a 240mm. Without image stabilization, the telephoto adapter is a bit less useful – in many circumstances, a lens that powerful is hard to hold steady. The third lens, a close-up attachment, lets the camera focus on subjects as close as 1.6 inches from the lens. I didn’t evaluate these lenses, so I cannot speak about their performance; however, the potential to augment the perspective is invaluable to most photographers and should increase the camera's appeal.
Auxiliary Flash – Canon also sells an external flash for the A520. The HF-DC1 is more powerful than the built-in flash. It comes with a bracket which holds it side-by-side with the camera. There is no electrical connection between the flash and the camera, however. The HF-DC1 is a “slave” flash, which fires when its sensor detects another flash going off. Canon warns that it might go off when other cameras flash near the A520, so it could be a bit unmanageable in a crowd – at a wedding or graduation, for instance.
