Canon PowerShot A700 review

That's not the only thing fast about this camera. It powered up and grabbed a first shot in 1.8 seconds and turned in shot-to-shot times of 2.1 seconds after that. Activating the flash slowed between-shot pauses to 4.9 seconds in our tests.

Red-eye-prevention mode only partially tamed red pupils in our test subjects. The flash displayed average power for cameras in this class, providing even illumination out to 3.5m at the wide-angle setting with ISO set to auto but only 2m when the lens was zoomed out to telephoto. We occasionally saw ghosting when framing with the LCD, but it did a fine job of gaining up to maintain visibility under low light.

Shooting speed in seconds  
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Typical shot-to-shot time

Time to first shot

Shutter lag (typical)

Casio Exilim EX-Z750

2.3 

1.8 

0.2 

Sony Cyber Shot DSC-T9

1.3 

1.7 

0.3 

Canon PowerShot A700

2.1 

1.8 

0.4 

Sanyo Xacti VPC-E6

2.3 

2.0 

0.7 

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ5

2.6 

3.0 

0.9 

Olympus FE-120

2.6 

4.9 

1.3 

Typical continuous-shooting speed in frames per second  
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Typical continuous-shooting speed

Sanyo Xacti VPC-E6

3.0 

Canon PowerShot A700

2.0 

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ5

1.6 

Sony Cyber Shot DSC-T9

1.5 

Olympus FE-120

1.2 

Casio Exilim EX-Z750

0.8 

Image quality
We liked the Canon PowerShot A700's images, which were very similar to those of the less expensive A540. Metering in both cameras sacrificed detail in highlights in order to preserve detail in shadows, both had well-saturated colours, and neither had much noticeable purple fringing. The A700 produced slightly more neutral flesh tones than the A540, plus its automatic white-balance systems kept colours pure under both daylight and incandescent light.

As you might expect, since both cameras feature the same sensor as well as Canon's Digic II image processor, they had similar noise performance. Noise was low at ISO 80 and increased noticeably at ISO 400. While noise was more abundant at ISO 800, images were still usable.

Canon's A700 is versatile. Optional accessories let the camera grow with you and, along with the camera's many manual controls, make the Canon PowerShot A700 a decent choice for anyone who wants to learn more about photography while reserving the right to go fully automatic when needed. If you think you can settle for a 4x zoom instead of the A700's 6x lens though, then you may want to consider Canon's own A540 and put the cash saved towards accessories.

Edited by Philip Ryan
Additional editing by Kate Macefield