Canon PowerShot A2100 IS review

An attractive compact designed for hassle-free shots, but will its lack of manual options let it down?

Canon’s new PowerShot A2100 is an update to the A2000, with all the latest super-technologies to come out of the Canon stable of late built in.

The A2100 is refreshingly chunky against all the tiny super-slim models currently saturating the market, and you’ll appreciate that extra weight if you’re used to a DSLR and are looking for an everyday compact. It’s also pretty stylish, with its matte black finish and slightly rubberised feel. It stands out from the A1100, released around the same time, as the more sophisticated model of the two, with the lower-end model coming in a rainbow of colour options to appeal to the consumer market. However, despite the stylings of the A2100 leaning toward the more experienced photographer, it doesn’t have any manual controls, typical of the Canon PowerShot range recently. It’s auto-everything all the way here, which may leave you craving the creativity of high-end models or DSLRs, especially if this is a second camera in your arsenal. But if what you want is a sturdy compact that you can take everywhere, shoot hassle-free photos in seconds, share with the family and still get good image quality, then there’s plenty to please here.

Start-up time is around two seconds while the telescopic lens noisily moves into position. The lens offers a 6x optical zoom, which is pretty good for a compact in this price barrier. It’s a wide barrel and it’s noisy throughout its entire range, so not so great for candids or nature shots, for example. The zoom travel isn’t that smooth either; in fact, we’d describe it as ‘jerky’, and sometimes you have to really push/pull on the zoom lever to get a response. A shame really, as in operation, it’s great. There’s little evidence of distortion at either end of the zoom range and Canon’s Image Stabiliser (the IS in the camera title) is of the optical variety, resulting in shake-free images. It does a good job, but again you can hear every tiny little movement that it makes. It would have been nice to get a little more at the wide end of the lens, but 36mm is good enough for most shooting situations.

Shots are composed using the three-inch LCD, which dominates the back of the camera. It’s bright enough to make it easy to compose in all lighting situations; a must given that there is no viewfinder. The viewing angle is pretty large too, which is great for playback and showing off your images. Its only problem comes when you’re shooting indoors, as the screen is quite noisy and it’s hard to check exposure with all that grain.

The Mode dial on the top is cluttered with options to choose from. As we’ve mentioned, there are no manual options. Instead you have the choice between Easy, Auto and Program modes. Easy is, well, easy. There are no options at all for you to choose from, and it uses the Scene Detection Technology to optimise exposure in your shots. Auto mode also uses this new feature, but gives you image size and flash options. The Program mode lets you change metering, white balance and ISO controls, as well as adding colour effects. To be honest though, we hardly see the point of having three very similar shooting modes; just Program and Auto would have been fine. The rest of the Mode dial is taken up with scene options – Portrait, Landscape, Night Snapshot, Kids & Pets and Indoor are pulled out with their own stops on the dial, with more options available from the SCN stop. A manual setting is sorely missed.

Working with what you’ve got, it’s actually very easy to fall into trusting the camera to make shooting decisions when you’re out and about. It’s nice to be able to whip out the camera and start shooting everything around you without worrying about setting up a shot. Plus you can pass it around every member of your family, knowing that they can’t break it and will end up with good results. The Scene Detection Technology works well, though you need to let the camera analyse the scene and select the right mode, which takes around a second, but it didn’t get the wrong mode in any of our shots – which means that you’ll rarely venture into the individual scene modes unless you can’t wait for the camera to analyse the scene. The only time that we recommend using Program mode every time is with macro shots. The Scene Detection will switch into Macro mode when you move in close to an object, but we found that results were better by selecting the Macro focus option from the D-pad – with a closest focus distance of 1cm, this is a great creative option.

We took a range of shots on a bright, sunny day with the camera and are pleasantly surprised with the image quality. Colours are true to life, but not overly vivid – we found that a slight Levels adjustment in Photoshop gave a bit more ‘ping’ to the images. Shots are sharp edge to edge, and details are wonderfully maintained. To pick holes, there are occasions of blown highlights, especially in particularly bright scenes, but generally the built in i-Contrast will bring out details without blowing the lighter areas.

Actually, we love almost everything about this camera. If it just had the manual setting, it would be on our shopping list for sure – the design, lens and image quality make this a tempting second camera option.