Canon PowerShot A95

There is something strange going on when cameras seem to get bigger as technology gets smaller. The A95 is a big camera. With batteries in, it tipped our scales at 350g, yet it only sports a 3X optical zoom and a 1.8" LCD. It's definitely not suitable for carrying in a pocket, and would likely double the weight of a small bag.

It is a pity the camera is so unwieldy, because its feature set is quite good. Offering a full range of shutter speed, focus and aperture controls, as well as a great selection of white balancing presets and a fully customisable mode, it definitely puts power in your hands. It also offers two continuous shooting modes (for taking several photos over a few seconds) to help capture an event or help you get the best shot. The only additional feature we would have liked to see is an automatic exposure bracketing feature.

A contributor to the massive size of the A95 is definitely the supported battery type. It employs four AA batteries. It comes with a set of rechargeable alkaline AAs. The upside is the A95 has great battery life. It lasted just over 600 shots in our tests, which is an incredible feat for a camera using AA batteries.

The LCD is crisp and clear. Very few cameras in this category choose to use a flip-out LCD, which can be handy to view your subject from a more comfortable angle. However, we would have expected a much larger screen than 1.8", somewhere in the range of 2.5", to help justify the size of the model.

At first glance the images taken by the camera in our tests appeared to be very good. The middle was clear, bright and the colours were rich and not too faded. As we moved towards the outside of the picture, however, things began to blur. This was not such a problem on simple subjects, but objects like foliage and other areas of detail suffered quite badly around the edge of the pictures.