The chunky, 5-MP PowerShot A460 won't fit in your pocket and feels heavy in your hand, but its 4X optical zoom and optical viewfinder help it stand out from the budget crowd. Canon also includes a manual setting for tweaking the white balance, ISO, and exposure. This digicam produced a passable snap of our colleague; however, a vase of yellow flowers looked fuzzy, with purple fringing surrounding the window in the background. Other images also appeared noisy, and when the ISO was maxed out (at 400), the A460's photos looked especially grainy. The eight scene modes include the standard Portrait, plus more specific choices like Snow and Foliage. On the video side, the A460 records VGA footage at only 10 fps, which is fine for playback on the digicam's LCD, but not on a TV or PC screen. Check out our photo-quality comparison gallery to see how this camera’s images compare to other affordable cameras.

 

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