Canon A80 Digital Camera - UPDATED
This little camera, with the after-purchase 256K CF memory, is a gem. It is difficult to imagine any additional features that it should have. Also, It's size, although not small, does allow fitting into a man's pants pocket (barely). It is sturdy, being made of all metal.
One feature it does NOT have is a mandatory push-to change on the mode dial. I find that by constantly inserting and removing it from pockets or various other enclosures, the setting gets changed. When I take my next shot, I have a tendency to assume the setting has not been changed. A risky decision, because it usually has been nudged a few notches away from your assumed mode.
It came with "stitch" software that allows stitching multiple shots together in order to get a larger composite, either vertical, horizontal, or both. The camera has an assistant that seems almost provide more hindrance than usefulness - with one exception. It provides a logical numbering sequence so that you can later identify the images that you intend to stitch together once loaded into your computer. However, the file naming scheme does not provide alphabetical sorting sequence, making grouping of the related images difficult at best. Too bad this annoyance exists.
The other problem is that the stitched images are of little web-based use. If one posts them in a viewable size, they take up huge amounts of download time. Remember, they are many individual images stitched together, and the size mushrooms accordingly. If one reduces the panorama to a reasonable size, then the image is far to small to be useful. So, nice effect on your computer, marginal use for web, only if perhaps only two images are stitched together.
UPDATE: After using this camera a few weeks, it have identified two glaring oversights/issues:
1) The view screen cannot be read in the sunlight. Since all camera functions/controls/adjustments are managed on this screen, this is a monumental problem.
ANY TIME YOU CHECK OUT A CAMERA THAT YOU WANT TO BUY, TAKE IT OUTSIDE AND CHECK THE ABILITY TO READ THE SCREEN IN THE SUN. YOU WILL SHOOT MOST OF YOUR PHOTOS IN THE SUN!
2)The mode adjust dial on top has no lock. Since this camera is (arguably) a pocket camera, one puts it in a pocket frequently. About 90% of the time, this process changes the dial settings on top of the camera. Frequently, until you have been trained by failures, one takes a photo with the setting in the wrong position because he assumes it to be the same as last shot.
THIS DIAL NEEDS A POSITIVE PUSHBUTTON-RELEASE LOCK TO ASSURE THAT SETTINGS ARE NOT KNOWINGLY CHANGED.
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