Canon has done well with the Powershot A630. This compact digital camera has a complete feature set including full-manual controls, manual focus and custon white-balance. The A630 handles well and produces rather images with nicely saturated colors, good sharpness, exposure and low-noise up to ISO 100. At ISO 200, noise becomes apparent but it stll produces very usable results with plenty of details. ISO 400 and 800 are too noisy to be useable.

 

There is no problem recommending the Canon A630 based on its performance and ergonomics. Of course, this camera is not without flaws and, in this respect, the previous Powershot A-series flagship cameras, did even better. This camera's 4X optical zoom lens is the source of its ony significant problem. While some barrel distortion at wide-angle is common and acceptable, as is slight corner softness, vignetting is more serious. The A630's lens has enough light fall-off to make vignetting noticeable in everyday pictures, particularly in front of uniformly lit subjects or sky. This gives such pictures an undesirable tunnel-like appearance.

 

As alternate models, the Canon Powershot A620 and Canon Powershot A610 are definitely worth considering. There is also the execellent Fuji Finepix E900 for a high-resolution alternative.