Canon A2000 IS

Movie Mode (7.25)
The movie mode on the A2000 can shoot 624x480, 320x240 or the minuscule 160x120. You can control color mode and white balance while filming, set a timer, adjust the focus mode, and alter the brightness. The zoom is turned off while recording, probably due to the microphone's placement right next to the lens, where the whirring gears would come through on the recording prominently.

Drive / Burst Mode (7.00)
One of the facets of Canon's point-and-shoot range that we really like is the customizable timer system. In addition to the standard 10- and 2- second timer, you can craft your own, setting delay between 1 and 30 seconds, and taking up to 10 shots in a row when the self-timer expires, a huge advantage if you're trying to take group portraits and don't want to keep getting up to press the shutter again.

There's only one level of continuous shooting, which we found to shoot at 1.2 images per second, quite close to the manufacturer's stated 1.3 shots per second.

Playback Mode (8.00)
Pressing DISP while in Playback mode changes the screen's information display. You can view just the picture; date and time the shot was taken; all shooting details, brightness histogram and overexposed areas highlighted; and finally focus check, which enlarges the center of the image so you can see if your photo is sharp enough. Zooming in provides up to 10x magnification, at which point you can press the set button, then use the arrows to switch between images at the same level of enlargement. Zooming out takes you to a thumbnail view of nine images at a time, which can then be navigated one image at a time. If you zoom out again, you can flick between pages with nine images on each.

Zooming in while in Playback

 Custom Image Presets (6.30)
Five of the image presets are located on the mode dial itself, while a sixth scene mode setting on the dial lets you choose from additional options. The list of choices isn't shockingly huge, but it should cover most eventualities. On the dial are portrait, landscape, night snapshot, kids and pets (apparently the two functio indistinguishably) and indoor mode. In scene mode you can shoot night scene, sunset, foliage, snow, beach, fireworks, aquarium or ISO 3200, the last of which is at reduced 1600x1200 resolution.