Features
Canon has upped the zoom ante to 4x in this follow-up to the popular PowerShot A85, with a 35mm-to-140mm (35mm-camera equivalent) set of optics that gives you a fairly fast f/2.6 maximum aperture at the widest-angle setting, dropping to f/5.5 at the tele position. The Canon PowerShot A520's smallest f-stop is f/8 at both ends of the zoom scale. This camera maintains its predecessors' versatility by providing fully manual exposure control along with a broad range of automatic options. Manual shutter speeds range from 15 seconds to 1/2,000 of a second and noise reduction kicks in automatically for any exposure longer than 1.3 seconds.
You can choose evaluative, centre-weighted or spot metering and programmed autoexposure, or switch to fully automatic exposure or one of the basic scene options that reside on the mode dial, including Portrait, Landscape, Night Scene, Fast Shutter (sports), Slow Shutter and Stitch Assist (panorama). There are also six special scene modes clustered on a seventh dial position, including Foliage, Snow, Beach, Underwater, Indoor, Kids & Pets and Night Snapshot. Macro focus brings you as close as 50mm, and this Canon's selectable one-point-centre or nine-point autofocus system is aided by a focus-assist lamp.
Unlike most cameras in this class, the PowerShot A520 is surprisingly expandable. You can press a button to remove a plastic collar around the lens and attach optional bayonet-mount 1.75x telephoto or 0.75x wide-angle lenses or a 52mm filter adaptor. There's also an underwater housing available from Canon. There's no hotshoe on this camera, however. If you want to use a flash that's higher powered than the built-in light, you can attach a unit that fits on a bracket screwed into the tripod socket and syncs wirelessly with the camera. Both Canon and third-party vendors make them.
Performance
The Canon PowerShot A520's burst mode and shutter-lag performance are its strengths. Shutter lag measures a quick 0.6 seconds under high-contrast lighting and a respectable 0.9 seconds under low-contrast lighting, while burst mode was able to snap off seven full-resolution frames in less than 4 seconds. You can shoot all day if you reduce resolution to 640x480 with maximum compression. We got 97 shots in 60 seconds during our test.
Unfortunately, the A520 was a little lethargic in single-frame mode when using flash. When powered off, it took 3.7 seconds to awaken before we could snap off our first picture, and it provided shot-to-shot times of 2.5 seconds without the speedlight. The average 7-second wait between flash exposures seemed much longer, however, and sometimes stretched to 10 seconds or more when we shot several consecutive flash shots.
Canon touts this camera's zoom-flash mode, which changes the flash angle to match the zoom setting. Even so, flash range is no more than 3.4m at the wide-angle setting and about 2.1m when using the telephoto (ISO unspecified) -- about the same as other cameras in this class. Flash coverage was even, and exposures were good, however, and you can adjust the output from one-third to full power. The red-eye-prevention feature didn't do a lot to prevent red eyes, though.
The 46mm (1.8-inch) LCD washes out under direct illumination and displays the usual ghosting during camera or subject movement. The optical viewfinder gives you a reasonably big, bright perspective. It represents an acceptable alternative for everyday viewing, except when you're shooting close-ups, as it suffers from parallax problems that make composition difficult.
Image quality
Photo quality from the Canon PowerShot A520 was very good for a 4-megapixel camera. The exposure system tended to favour shadow areas, which showed lots of detail, at the expense of highlight areas that were often washed out. Flesh tones were often a little ruddy, but other colours were fairly accurate, if muted. Flash exposures tended to be a little warm, and automatic white balance sometimes produced bluish casts under incandescent light indoors.
As you might hope, noise levels were low at the minimum ISO 50 sensitivity setting and rose dramatically at ISO 400, but the images were still quite acceptable at that rating. Some detail was masked by moderate JPEG artefacts, and chromatic aberrations, especially purple fringing, were evident around backlit subjects.
Edited by Aimee Baldridge
Additional editing by Nick Hide
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Stuart Owen 7 January 2006
Good: The camera's adaptability for nearly any eventuality make this multi-function camera a steel at this price
Bad: Not all functions work brilliantly; red eye reduction is poor, no warning when battery is going to run out, doesn't come with a case as standard
Comment: I wanted a multi function camera, which is why I bought the Canon Powershit A520. There are cheaper cameras, for £50 less, with more mega pixels, but none have the functionality of this camera. As an amateur photographer on a budget I especially liked the Super Macro, Landscape Sitch Assist & Sepia/B&W functions.
For indoor photos the extra bright flash offers very clear crisp images, but without it a lot of pictures appeared blurred.
This minor moan aside this is a great buy with lots of functions at a very reasonable price.
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