Canon A720 IS Philadelphia PA

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Originally published at Internet.com

While certainly not the thinnest camera in the world, the Canon PowerShot A720 IS is compact enough to meet the portable requirements of most shutterbugs hungering for a camera they can stow on their person and keep out of mind until it's time to capture a moment. If tight jeans are your thing, the A720 at 3.83-by-2.64-by-1.65 inches and weighing a tad over seven ounces, pocketing the camera may be challenging, but for flannel shirt types like myself, it will nestle comfortably in a breast pocket. The silver unit with blue, red, green and charcoal labeling is very comfortable to hold, thanks to its excellent balance and a hand grip on its right side. Although some fashion-conscious snappers may find the grip's bulge in a pocket inelegant, it's an absolute necessity for one-handed shooting-something that's easy to do with this Canon offering.

The camera's controls are thoughtfully placed and convenient to reach.

On top of the unit is the power switch, labeled on/off, speaker and shutter release button. Around the button is a ring for controlling the camera's 6x optical zoom lens (35-210 millimeters equivalent). The DSC also has a 4x digital zoom.

Between the power switch and shutter button is the mode dial. Here are the modes that can be accessed through the dial. Auto-The camera automatically chooses all the appropriate settings for a shot. P-Programmed mode. The camera picks the aperture and shutter speed for a shot based on the brightness of the subject. You can indirectly alter the aperture and shutter settings by changing the exposure compensation, light sensitivity (ISO) and white balance for the shot. If the unit can't take the shot under the existing lighting conditions, the aperture and shutter speed values will be displayed in red on the camera's LCD. Tv-Shutter priority. Despite what seems to me some bizarre labeling, this is the shutter preferred mode for the byteshooter. You set the shutter speed; the camera picks the aperture. If the aperture is displayed in red on the unit's LCD, you need to change your shutter setting to avoid underexposing or overexposing your shot. Av-Aperture priority. The flip side of Tv, you set the aperture for a shot, and the camera picks the shutter speed. Aperture determines your depth of field. At low aperture settings-2.8, 3.2 and such-you have a shallow depth of field. That's good for portrait shots where you want your subject to pop out of a blurred background. Higher settings—8.0, 7.1 and the like—give you a deeper depth of field. They're good for subjects like landscapes. What aperture settings are available for a shot depends on what end of the unit's zoom spectrum you're shooting in. At the wide end of the zoom shooting at a shutter speed of 1/2000 second or less, for example, the aperture range is limited to f4.0-8.0. At the telephoto end, shooting at a shutter speed of 1/2000 second or less constricts the range to f7.1-8.0 M-Manual. This gives you the power to set both the aperture and shutter speed for a shot. As you change those settings, the camera's LCD will get brighter or darker to reflect those changes. If your manual settings result in a shot being over- or underexposed by ±2 stops, you will be alerted to the problem by a red +2 or -2 on the unit's display Movie. In this mode, you can shoot AVI movies with sound that can be viewed with Apple's QuickTime media player, which runs on both PCs and Macs. The camera will set the focus, exposure and white balance for a shot when you partially depress its shutter button. Fully depressing the button will start recording; depressing it again will stop it. Panorama. By displaying a portion of a previous shot, this mode allows you to overlap a series of images. Later, those images can be stitched together using a computer to create panorama shots. Up to 26 photos can be linked in this mode. Stitching software for both Mac and PC is included with camera. SCN-Special Scene mode. Canon chose to split its array of preset offerings into two groups. The first group is clustered under this mode dial label. They include predetermined settings for night scenes, foliage, snow, beach, fireworks, aquarium and underwater. The company sagely suggests you obtain an optional underwater housing before trying to test the camera's submarine capabilities. In this mode, a large icon for the preset appears in the upper left corner of the screen. Settings can be changed by using camera's arrow dial. The second group of presets can be accessed directly from the unit's mode dial. Portrait. When photographing people, this mode will soften the shot and blur the background behind the person. Landscape. This setting is optimized for keeping objects both near and far in focus. Night Snapshot. A slight variation from Night Scene mode, where you want both you foreground and background subjects visible, this mode concentrates on bringing the target subject out of a dark background. Kids & Pets. While I have my doubts about crowding the mode dial with presets, as a dad and pet owner, this setting is one that I heartily endorse having on the dial. It's weighed toward capturing subjects that just won't stand still. Indoors. This mode contains settings optimized to offset camera shake at low shutter speeds and to compensate for indoor lighting. At the front of the camera is its built-in lens. It has a built-in lens cover-no need to worry about losing a lens cap-and 6x optical zoom (the 35mm equivalent of a 35-210mm zoom). At the maximum telephoto setting, the lens extends from the camera about 1.25 inches. At 10 o'clock from the lens is the camera's microphone. It's used to add voice memos to photos and provides sound for videos shot with the unit. Its location can be problematic when shooting video. Care must be taken to firmly wrap your fingers around the hand grip lest you cover up the mic with them. Above the microphone, is multi-purpose lamp. When lighting conditions are murky, it lights up a subject to assist the camera's auto focusing system. When using a flash, it will pre-light a subject to counter "red-eye." And it also blinks to tell you the camera's self-timer is active.

Beside the lamp is the front of the unit's optical viewfinder and abutting that, the unit's built-in flash. At five o'clock from the lens, there's a ring release button. It's used to remove the ring housing around the lens and attach an optional conversion lens adapter (LA-DC58G) to the camera. With the adapter attached, three converters can be used with the unit: a wide converter (WC-DC58N), a teleconverter (TC-DC58N) and a close-up lens (250D).
At the back of the camera is a 2.5-inch TFT LCD with a resolution of 115,000 pixels. The unit is bright and can be used in direct sunlight, but in those conditions many photographers will prefer to use the unit's optical viewfinder found above the display-even if it doesn't show 100 percent of a shot. On the right side of unit is a slide switch for toggling between shooting and playback mode.

Below the slider switch is the arrow pad. The circular pad is used for moving through the camera's menu system. Press the pad at 12 o'clock to move up, six o'clock to move down and so forth. In addition, in shooting mode, pressing the pad a 12 o'clock will give you quick access to a menu for choosing flash options and at six o'clock, access to a menu for macro options. In playback mode the pad is used for paging through photos.

Surrounding the arrow pad are four buttons. The one at 11 o'clock, calls up an exposure compensation menu in shooting mode and erases a single photo in playback mode. At one o'clock, the button is for print sharing. The button at seven o'clock turns the display on or off. And at five o'clock, the button accesses the unit's menu system. At the center of the arrow pad is function button. It's used to choose menu selections, as well as call up a quick menu in shooting mode. The quick menu is a strip of options that appear along the left side of the screen. Not only does this give you immediate access to commonly used functions-ISO, white balance, sequential shooting, color manipulation, flash exposure compensation, metering, image compression and image size-but it allows you to continue to view your subject while you're doing it. This is handy because it allows you to see what happens when you change some of the settings, such as white balance.

On the right side of the camera there's a mount for a wrist strap, which is included in the box, and on the left side, a compartment that contains sockets for an AC adapter (optional) and AV out (cable included) and a USB port (cable included).

The compartment for the camera's two AA batteries and an SD card slot, as well as a tripod socket are on the bottom of the unit.

Despite one or two quirks, the overall design of the camera makes its controls intuitive to use and comfortable to hold.