My A510

[Pic Courtesy Canon]

I got my new A510 last week and finally managed to take it out for a test run over the weekend. After 3 weeks, it felt real nice holding a camera in my hand and knowing that anything eyecatching I saw could instantly be recorded for posterity!

The A510 is noticeably smaller than my earlier A70 and the 2 batteries(against the A70's 4) make it noticeably lighter too. Though the overall look is the same, there are a few subtle changes in the features, placement of buttons, etc. Its truly amazing how the manufacturers manage to move things around to cram even more features into lesser amount of space.

The A510's click when taking a picture seems more pronounced and its dial, which allows me to switch among the different modes, seems more solid. Though the increase in magnification is just 1X, the 4X optical zoom makes quite a bit of a difference compared to the A70's 3X. And playing around with the menus showed up many new features(like the ability to set the time for the self-timer, more modes like foliage, fireworks, etc.). The camera also has direct printing though that's probably the 1 feature that I will never use.

Canon's already-impressive ZoomBrowser software has also gone through a major upgrade. It even looks different and has quite a few new features including automatic download of photos and recognition(and autorotation) of vertical shots. Real cool!

Here are three shots from the test drive [Click on pics for enlarged versions]...

The yellow rose finally bloomed and joined the others

From the neighbor's yard...

From another neighbor's yard...