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Canon takes yet Another Step Backwards
I am very frustrated and do not know who to reach out for help and understanding, but maybe someone at Canon will see my point and pass this along to someone who cares about customers getting what they expect when they UPGRADE and buy new cameras.
Right now I own 3 Canon cameras. The older Powershot A95, the EOS 20d and the recently released Canon A620.
I have been very happy with the older Canon A95 and also the EOS 20d which I also own and use professionally.
When I saw the new compact model Powershot A620 with vari-angle LCD and saw it’s improvements I bought it.
I have been very disappointed.
In many ways it is a better camera than the A95 with better resolution and a longer optical zoom, but in use it takes many more blurry and shaky pictures than the A95 or EOS 20d.
This is because for some odd reason Canon has removed the sports action setting (on the dial).
They’ve relaced it with a bunch of silly color settings but the camera now has less settings on the dial than the older A95 model.
I’ve tried every possible setting but can’t find anything that works like the sports action setting which was so powerful you could snap a picture of almost anything anywhere and it’d be sharp and in focus. Basically what sports mode did was boost the shutter speed higher but matched it with proper aperture setting.
I often use that setting on the A95 or EOS 20d when I am moving and don’t have time to stand still and take a “staged picture”. It works very well. Better than any other camera.
Now, however with the newer A620 it is impossible to take a picture of a fast moving object like an animal or cars or sports or anything moving at the beach for that matter as the sports action setting has been dropped.
That is a mystery to me… why would they make a newer model less capable than the model it replaced. And now with the newer models coming out - the action sports mode is still missing!
So, I still carry my older A95 in my pocket instead of my newer A620.
Now Canon has released yet more new models with vari-angle LCD and with better resolution yet - up to 10 Megapixels.
I eagerly looked at the new Canon cameras and was ready to buy the 10 Megapixel Canon A640 but I notice it still does not have an ACTION SPORTS mode setting.
While other camera companies are trying to satisfy customers with features to prevent BLURRED soft photos, Canon has decided to go a step backwards and REMOVE the excellent setting that made it possible to take pictures while moving in a car, riding on a bike or even walking.
I have tried every possible setting on my newer Canon A620 but have yet to find a suitable setting that is as effective as the simple sports setting (the one with icon of the running athlete). Someone said try the pets/kids setting in the scene mode but that does not work. It bumps up the shutter slightly but barely more than in Auto mode. It is not acceptable.
So, does anyone care about this??? How can a company just remove a setting and not even address it??? Don’t people want sharp and in focus pictures???
I’m really disappointed in Canon and will now start looking at other camera manufacturers. I’d rather not, but this is just too much. Maybe Nikon or Sony or Kodak has a small compact camera I can keep in my pocket with a flip out LCD and settings that take pictures in low light or sports or action and don’t blur. It’s worth investigating.
Canon PowerShot A640 with Vari-Angle LCD
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I couldn’t agree more! I gave up in utter frustration and bought a Nikon.
It reminds me of the time a few years back when a windows update disabled hundreds of thousands of eBooks overnight. I guess the lesson is that we are only as good as our newest product no matter how great our reputation might be.
Comment by Chris Bloor — January 30, 2007 @ 7:03 am