Canon PowerShot A570 IS

Auto Mode (7.5)
The PowerShot A570IS offers a full auto mode, which sets every parameter and control on the camera except zoom, but allows overrides of a range of exposure and color controls.

Program mode, which is grouped with the manual modes, sets both aperture and shutter speed. Other shooting settings, such as ISO and white balance, are set automatically in program mode.

Movie Mode (7.0)
The PowerShot A570IS has an impressive range of options for video file sizes, though it records sound only in mono - and the sound quality is not pleasing. The A570IS can shoot at 640x480 pixels at 30 frames per second, which is standard video. To make smaller files, it can also shoot 640x480 at 15 fps, 320x240 at 30fps or 15 fps, and 160x120 at 15 fps. To catch fast action better, the A570IS can shoot at 60 fps at 320x240. The A570IS is no substitute for a camcorder – most shooting controls are locked in video mode.

Drive / Burst Mode (6.0)
The PowerShot A570IS shoots either one shot at a time or in bursts, but the burst mode is very slow, clocking in slower than 2 frames per second. That's not good enough for sports action, or even for getting more than one or two shots of someone blowing out candles on a birthday cake. It's not really much of an advantage over the single shot mode. The A570IS also has a self-timer, which can delay shooting 2 or 10 seconds. The self-timer offers a custom setting, which can delay up to 30 seconds, and take up to 10 images.

Playback Mode (6.5)
The PowerShot A570IS's playback mode offers the basics. The display can show up to 9 images at a time in thumbnail mode, while many compact cameras show 16, 20 or 25 at a time. The relatively low resolution of the A570IS's display is probably the limiting factor in this regard. The A570IS can zoom in on very small sections of individual images to check quality, but again, the low-resolution display limits how well it can show the detail in a 7.1-megapixel image.

The user can opt to display just the image or the image accompanied by shooting information, including white balance, exposure data, image size, file name and so on. The A570IS offers a small histogram and a highlight warning mode, which makes pure white areas blink.

The A570IS offers Canon's typical image navigation, so it's possible to jump 10 or 100 images at a time and to view images by date or folder. The A570IS allows users to record audio annotations to associate with an image.

The slide show option shows all the images on the memory card in sequence, with or without image data. It does not offer a choice of transitions or the option to show only selected images, or change the display interval. Users can choose to loop the show, start over from the beginning, or show images continuously. The slide shows shows movies in sequence with still images.

The user can delete single images, a selected group of images, or all unprotected images on a memory card.

Custom Image Presets (7.5)
Five custom image presets are accessible using the mode dial: Portrait, Landscape, Night Snapshot, Kids & Pets and Indoor. Portrait uses a wide aperture to blur the background, which accentuates the subject. Landscape uses a small aperture to maintain focus on both near and far subjects. Kids & Pets tries to freeze movement with fast shutter speeds; Night snapshot uses flash, moderately long exposures and image stabilization to retain as much detail as possible in a near subject and a darker background. Indoor uses image stabilization to shoot indoors without flash, to keep color and lighting natural.

Eight more modes are available via an onscreen menu. They are Night Scene, which uses longer exposures than Night Snapshot, Foliage, which accentuates plant colors; Snow, which maintains detail in photos of people when they're in front of a snowy backgrounds and gets rid of the blue tint common in snow scenes; Beach, which also maintains exposure against bright backgrounds; Fireworks, which makes an exposure of several seconds with the focus set to infinity; Aquarium, which sets the right color balance and ISO for shooting fish in a tank, and boosts colors; Underwater, which adjusts settings for using the A570IS underwater in a waterproof housing; and Stitch Assist, with helps the user create panoramic images by combining multiple shots of a scene.

The PowerShot A570IS's scene modes include options for the many kinds of pictures that snapshooters like to take. The A570IS doesn't include the oddball modes that used to pop up on beginners' cameras, such as "food," "business card," or "online auction." Experienced users with more sophisticated cameras would choose different settings from the ones the A570IS sets in some cases, but the small camera achieves its goal of maximizing the number of usable images shot.