Canon PowerShot A470 (Gray)
Manufacturer: Canon USA Part number: 2503B001
- More product information:
- Editors' review
- User reviews
- Specifications
- Product series
- Accessories
- Manufacturer info
- Bottom Line:
- For the money, you'd have a hard time finding a better snapshot camera.
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Where to buy
| store | customer rating | inventory | tax & shipping | price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon.com Marketplace |  | In stock | Enter zip code to get total price: Price +Tax +Shipping =Total price | as of 11/08/2009 |
CNET editors' review
Canon PowerShot A470 (Gray) price range: $114.95
- Reviewed by: Will Greenwald
- Reviewed on: 03/19/2008
The good: Inexpensive; fast performance.
The bad: Noisy pictures; chunky design.
The bottom line: For the money, you'd have a hard time finding a better snapshot camera.
You don't need to pay a lot to get a pretty good digital camera. Solid budget models are becoming less expensive and offering better performance every year. The Canon PowerShot A470 is one of the best examples of this trend. With a price tag less than $150, it produces surprisingly good pictures. It isn't the prettiest camera available and it doesn't have any flashy features, but for the price, it's hard to beat.
Canon tries to give the A470 a much-needed injection of style by offering four color choices: gray, blue, red, and orange. Unfortunately, colorful accents can't hide the camera's chunky, unattractive design. It feels like a king-size candy bar, measuring almost 4 inches long, 2 inches thick, and more than an inch and a half wide. At 7.6 ounces with an SD card and two AA batteries, it also weighs in as one of the heftiest budget cameras available. The lens and LCD screen both jut out uselessly from the body, giving it a bumpy, uneven feel. Compared with the huge selection of budget point-and-shoots on the market measuring just an inch thick or less, the A470 is downright huge. On the bright side, the camera's large body makes it easy to grip and hold, and its wide design leaves room for large, simple controls that even bigger thumbs can comfortably manipulate.
A barebones feature set accompanies the A470's barebones price tag. The camera's 38-to-132mm-equivalent, f/3.0-5.8 lens offers a slightly longer than usual reach, but offers a narrower field of view than most snapshot cameras' 35mm-equivalent-or-wider lenses. A 2.5-inch, 115,000-pixel screen is the only method of framing your shot, and can be difficult to use on sunny days. You won't find a lot of controls on the A470, but adjustable ISO, exposure controls, and manual white-balance settings offer some flexibility when shooting. It features the standard handful of scene preset modes, plus a movie mode that can record QVGA (320x240) movies at 30 frames per second, or VGA (640x480) movies at a slower-than-usual 20fps. Finally, the A470 includes face-detecting autofocus and autoexposure, an increasingly popular feature that's still a bit surprising to find on such an inexpensive model.
Despite a very slow flash, the A470 proved to be a surprisingly fast shot. In our lab tests, the camera took 2.1 seconds from power-on to first shot, and could capture a new picture every 1.4 seconds after with the flash disabled. With the onboard flash turned on, however, that wait exploded to 5 seconds. With our high-contrast (bright light) target, the camera's shutter lagged a respectable 0.5 second, and with our low-contrast (low-light) target, the shutter lagged a truly remarkable 0.9 second. Most cameras, especially budget models, tend to lag over a second when shooting subjects in low light. Between the low shutter lag and long flash recycle time, the A470 proves bittersweet in low light. While it can snap a shot very quickly at first, you'll be waiting a while before it can fire the flash again. Finally, the A470's continuous shooting mode captured 30 7-megapixel shots in 33 seconds for a rate of 0.9 frame per second.
Noise mars the A470's otherwise very nice pictures. Grain starts to appear at ISO 200, and becomes quite noticeable at ISO 400. From ISO 800 to the camera's maximum sensitivity of ISO 1,600, fuzz saturates the picture, giving everything a felt-like texture. Besides the noise, however, the camera's pictures look good. Fine details appear crisp and clear, especially for a sub-$150 camera. Minor barrel distortion appears on the edges of pictures at the widest lens position, but it doesn't seriously hurt picture quality. Colors look generally neutral, though they sometimes appear slightly cooler than usual. If you keep sensitivity low, the A470 will produce good-looking prints. Even at higher ISO settings, pictures look clear enough to e-mail or post to the Web.
For the money, the Canon PowerShot A470 is a great digital camera. The chunky, sub-$150 shooter doesn't have many bells or whistles, but it shoots quickly in brighter light and produces very nice-looking pictures. It doesn't work very well in low light, but that's a flaw shared by most snapshot cameras in general. If you want to spend as little cash as possible for a decent camera, the PowerShot A470 is one of the best choices currently available.
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
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Typical shot-to-shot time | |
Time to first shot | |
Shutter lag (typical) |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
User reviews
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Even better with CHDK firmware.
by aprgeronimo on September 14, 2009
Pros: Fast shooting, some manual controls, overall good quality pictures.
Cons: To much noise, big sized, high battery consumption..
Summary: I've bought one of these cameras influenced by the Cnet's reviews and could't be happier with my $150,00 (with 2GB SD card and rechargeable Sony batteries) ...
Summary: I've bought one of these cameras influenced by the Cnet's reviews and could't be happier with my $150,00 (with 2GB SD card and rechargeable Sony batteries) spent...But recently i've discovered the CHDK firmware and now I can truly say that I've made an excellent deal choosing Canon.. With this "upgrade" I can now make time lapse movies, bracketing (EV, Focus, ISO) and much more....
1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
Specifications
- Manufacturer: Canon USA
- Part number: 2503B001
- Description: Sleek and sensational, the PowerShot A470 comes in four eye-catching colors that will get you noticed. Plus, it's got everything you need to make shooting fast and fun. There's the 7.1-megapixel resolution, a 3.4x optical zoom Lens, a large 2.5-inch LCD and a full range of performance features including enhanced Face Detection technology and a DIGIC III Image Processor to keep every image looking its best. Vertical Shooting has never been easier - just press the Print/Share button. It's that simple!
General
- Product Type Digital camera - Compact
- Width 4.1 in
- Depth 1.6 in
- Height 2.2 in
- Weight 5.8 oz
- Enclosure Color Gray
Main Features
- Resolution 7.1 megapixels
- Color Support Color
- Optical Sensor Type CCD
- Total Pixels 7,400,000 pixels
- Effective Sensor Resolution 7,100,000 pixels
- Optical Sensor Size 1/2.5 in
- Light Sensitivity ISO 80, ISO 100, ISO 200, ISO 400, ISO 800, ISO 1600, ISO auto
- Digital Zoom 4 x
- Shooting Modes Frame movie mode
- Shooting Programs Snow, Beach, Macro, Indoor, Sunset, Foliage, Aquarium, Fireworks, Kids & pets, Portrait mode, Night snapshot
- Special Effects Sepia, Vivid, Neutral, Black & White
- Max Shutter Speed 1/2000 sec
- Min Shutter Speed 15 sec
- Exposure Metering Spot, Evaluative, Center-weighted
- Exposure Modes Program, Automatic
- Exposure Compensation ±2 EV range, in 1/3 EV steps
- Face Detection Yes
- White Balance Custom, Presets, Automatic
- White Balance Presets Cloudy, Daylight, Tungsten light, Fluorescent light (cool white), Fluorescent light (warm white)
- Digital Video Format AVI
- Still Image Format JPEG
- Continuous Shooting Speed 1.9 frames per second
- TV Tuner None
- Video Capture AVI - 640 x 480 - 22 sec - With 32MB built-in memory, AVI - 640 x 480 - 45 sec - With 32MB built-in memory, AVI - 320 x 240 - 43 sec - With 32MB built-in memory, AVI - 160 x 120 - 210 sec - With 32MB built-in memory
Memory / Storage
- Flash Memory 32 MB Flash - SD Memory Card
- Supported Flash Memory MultiMediaCard, SD Memory Card
- Floppy Drive None
- Digital Storage Media None
- Image Storage Super-fine JPEG 3072 x 2304 : 9 - With 32MB card - 3 MB, Fine JPEG 3072 x 2304 : 15 - With 32MB card - 1.9 MB, Normal JPEG 3072 x 2304 : 32 - With 32MB card - 902 KB, Super-fine JPEG 2592 x 1944 : 11 - With 32MB card - 2.5 MB, Fine JPEG 2592 x 1944 : 20 - With 32MB card - 1.4 MB, Normal JPEG 2592 x 1944 : 41 - With 32MB card - 695 KB, Super-fine JPEG 2048 x 1536 : 18 - With 32MB card - 1.6 MB, Fine JPEG 2048 x 1536 : 32 - With 32MB card - 893 KB, Normal JPEG 2048 x 1536 : 64 - With 32MB card - 445 KB, Super-fine JPEG 1600 x 1200 : 29 - With 32MB card - 1 MB, Fine JPEG 1600 x 1200 : 52 - With 32MB card - 558 KB, Normal JPEG 1600 x 1200 : 99 - With 32MB card - 278 KB, Super-fine JPEG 640 x 480 : 111 - With 32MB card - 249 KB, Fine JPEG 640 x 480 : 171 - With 32MB card - 150 KB, Normal JPEG 640 x 480 : 270 - With 32MB card - 84 KB, Super-fine JPEG 3072 x 1728 : 12 - With 32MB card - 2.3 MB, Fine JPEG 3072 x 1728 : 20 - With 32MB card - 1.4 MB, Normal JPEG 3072 x 1728 : 42 - With 32MB card - 678 KB
Camera Flash
- Camera Flash Built-in flash
- Flash Modes Auto mode, Fill-in mode, Slow synchro, Flash OFF mode, Red-eye reduction
- Red Eye Reduction Yes
- Effective Flash Range 1 ft - 10 ft
- Features AF illuminator
Lens System
- Type Zoom lens - 6.3 mm - 21.6 mm - F/3.0-5.8
- Focal Length 6.3 mm - 21.6 mm
- Focal Length Equivalent to 35mm Camera 38 - 132 mm
- Focus Adjustment Automatic
- Auto Focus TTL contrast detection
- Min Focus Range 18.5 in
- Macro Focus Range 1cm
- Lens Aperture F/3.0-5.8
- Optical Zoom 3.4 x
- Zoom Adjustment Motorized drive
- Lens Construction 6 group(s) / 7 element(s)
- Lens Manufacturer Canon
- Features Aspherical lens, Built-in lens shield
Additional Features
- Self Timer Yes
- Self Timer Delay 2 sec, 10 sec
- Additional Features DPOF support, Direct print, Face detection, Audio recording, Date/time stamp, Built-in speaker, Histogram display, Resizing an image, PictBridge support, USB 2.0 compatibility, Digital image rotation, Digital noise reduction, RGB primary color filter, In-camera red-eye removal, Camera orientation detection
Viewfinder
- Viewfinder Type None
- Viewfinder Color Support Color
Display
- Type LCD display - TFT active matrix - 2.5 in - Color
- Display Form Factor Built-in
- Display Format 115,000 pixels
Digital Player (Recorder)
- Type None
Microphone
- Type Microphone - Built-in
Connections
- Connector Type 1 x USB, 1 x Composite video/audio output
- Expansion Slot(s) 1 x SD Memory Card
Software
- Software Canon PhotoStitch, Canon ImageBrowser, Drivers & Utilities, Canon ZoomBrowser EX
System Requirements for PC Connection
- Operating System Support MS Windows XP, MS Windows 2000, MS Windows Vista, Apple Mac OS X 10.3.x - 10.4.x
- Peripheral Devices USB port, CD-ROM drive
Miscellaneous
- Carrying Case None
- Microsoft Certifications Certified for Windows Vista
- Included Accessories Wrist strap
- Cables Included 1, 1 x USB cable, A/V cable
Power
- Power Device None
Battery
- Supported Battery AA
- Supported Battery 2 x AA Alkaline battery ( Included ), 2 x AA NiMH rechargeable battery
Environmental Parameters
- Min Operating Temperature 32 °F
- Max Operating Temperature 104 °F
- Humidity Range Operating 10 - 90%
Product series
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Manufacturer: Canon USA
Specs: 7.1 megapixels, 3.4 x, 2.5 in LCD display, 32 MB - SD Memory Card
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Manufacturer: Canon USA
Specs: 7.1 megapixels, 3.4 x, 2.5 in LCD display, 32 MB - SD Memory Card
-
Manufacturer: Canon USA
Specs: 7.1 megapixels, 3.4 x, 2.5 in LCD display, 32 MB - SD Memory Card
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Manufacturer: Canon USA
Specs: 7.1 megapixels, 3.4 x, 2.5 in LCD display, 32 MB - SD Memory Card
Accessories
Manufacturer info
- Canon USA
- Manufacturer profile
- Browse Canon USA products on Shopper.com
-
- Website: http://estore.usa.canon.com/
- Address:
One Canon Plaza, Lake Success, NY 11042 - Phone: 516-328-5000
- Email: mediacontact@cusa.canon.com
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