Canon PowerShot A310

With the 3-megapixel camera market so crowded, you wouldn't have thought there was a need to introduce any more. Canon, however, disagrees and has just launched its 3.2-megapixel A310.

Around the same size as a compact 35mm film camera, the A310 is very light and, thanks to the plastic case, quite cheap looking. It doesn't feel very tough and we'd suggest a rugged carrying case for transportation.

Of course, picture quality is a digital camera's main attribute, but we were left slightly disappointed with the A310. For starters, there's no optical zoom, only a 5.1x digital zoom. This soon degrades the picture quality and we weren't happy with the results. The digital zoom can be disabled, which we'd recommend doing.

This just leaves you with a basic point-and-click camera. To be fair, the results aren't bad, but they hardly set the digital photography world alight. For simple email use or the occasional printout they should suffice, though.

In the A310's defence, it's easy to use, with all of the shooting modes, including landscape and close-up, selectable from a cursor pad on the rear of the camera. There are also some manual settings for those that like more control over the output.

Pictures are stored on a CompactFlash memory card, which is good enough for around 50 pictures at the highest quality setting. CompactFlash cards are very cheap and you can get models up to 4Gb in size.

There's also a movie mode that shoots at 15 frames per second (fps), which is 10fps slower than a TV picture and a little jerky. Finally, there's a direct print function which lets you print directly to a compatible USB printer - although it's much better to edit your pictures on a PC first before printing them out. Overall, the A310 isn't a bad camera, if you're only looking for a point-and-click model.

Contact: Canon 0870 514 3723
www.canon.co.uk