Canon PowerShot A720 IS

Incremental UpdateThe Canon PowerShot A720 IS is an upgrade to the A710 IS, which was a very good point-and-shoot camera—one of the best that we saw during our comparison test last year. The most prominent change in the A720 IS, is its resolution. It is now an 8 Megapixel camera as opposed to the 7.1 MP A710.The picture quality has stayed pretty much the same too. The ISO level on this camera goes up to 1600. The A710 IS had a maximum of 800. The amount of grain beyond 800 is pretty bad and should be avoided as far as possible. The zoom lens is decent and there’s no serious degradation of quality at maximum zoom.The colours—as with all other Canons—are very neutral and not exaggerated. The images aren’t too high on contrast so there’s a smooth balance between the dark and the bright areas. This makes for some good portrait photography. The flash is pretty powerful too and the slow sync mode works rather well in illuminating the background in shots with the flash on. Macro shots are fairly easy to shoot and it’s possible to get extremely close to the object. The A720 IS now has a face detection feature, which works well and tracks people through darker areas as well.The movie quality is decent and actually usable in low light situations. There’re no sudden jumps in exposure while moving from bright areas to dark ones. Image stabilization evens out the bumps and the zoom works well, although a little aggressively, in the movie shooting mode. The A720 IS, is incrementally superior to the A710 IS. The problem with the A720 IS, is not so much to do with the camera itself, but with the other cameras even from Canon itself in the same price bracket. The SX100 is more or less available for the same price in the market and comes with a 10X optical zoom. If any, the A720 IS’s only advantage is that of being a little more compact than the SX100 IS.

Specifications:8.0 MP, 4x optical zoom, ISO Sensitivity: 80—1600, Shutter speed 1/2000th—15 seconds, Aperture range—f2.8—f4.8, Movie recording: 640x480 at 30 fps, 2.5-inch screen.