Facts:

• Camera Name: Canon A20
• Price Paid:  CDN$549 (US$ 361) + 14% tax
• Place of Purchase: A-Power Computer (www.a-power.com)
• Purchase Date:     June 2nd, 2001
• Extra Power: 4 sets 1600mah NiMh + 1 fast Maha charger for US$70
• Extra Memory: 48MB (will buy 128MB for CDN$150 later)

Features:

• CCD: 2.1M (quite sufficient)
• Photo size:
   1600x1200, (useful for serious photos, 8x10 when printed)
   1024x768,
   640x480    (useful for "Diary" pictures, to record story digitally).
• Optical zoom: 3x (35mm to 105mm, step zoom)
• Digital zoom: 2.5x (sometimes useful)
• Power:   4 AA batteries (Purchase of NiMh rechargeable is a MUST)
• Storage: compact flash (8mb default, at least 48MB to be practical)
  
• Extra: Stitched assisted panorma mode
• Most Useful features: 3x optical Zoom, white balance
  

Sample Photos:

• Click on the gallery thumbnails (after No. 7) will bring you to the galleries with hundreds of photos.
• Otherwise, clicking on the thumbnail will bring you to the picture (avoid clicking "view").
• Most sample photos are NOT enhanced (except those photos without extra information).
• All (except the photos on this page) had been sized down to 800 x 600 (and lower resolution) to conserve space.
• The photo information is directly captured from JPEG file.

Gallery Day Canon A20 can takes pretty good day time photos. The camera has a habbit of picking the focus point randomly (perhaps getting inspiration from some arcane divine rules). But as long as there are lots of light, it can focus pretty well.
Gallery Duck Taking photos of ducks with this camera is fun and easy. The camera is fast (compare with other cheap digital cameras). It won't miss the duck (... sometimes). But of course, it can't compare with a regular SLR camera.
Gallery Garden If there's only one good thing about the Camera A20, then it must be the Macro photos for flowers. Flowers are huge and the stupid foucsing mechanism in Canon A20 won't miss it so easily.
Gallery Night The night photos with Canon A20 is a bit limited but still pretty good. The slow shutter is only 1 second. Many other cameras can take "more visible" night time photos. But they also have lots of noise (except with high end camera like Nikon 995 or Canon G2)
Gallery Spider The viewfinder is extremely unaccurate. The things you see from the viewfinder is 100 miles away from the true pictures. Since the power is cheap, I used my LCD almost 90% of the times which I could never dream of with my previous camera.
Tips White Balance The white balance is extremely useful because lots of time the dumb camera can't figure out what is really white. In nature light, the AWB is good. Without flash, the AWB is always wrong. This is a two click feature.
1) Bee 06/23/01 4:09:42 PM
2) Duck Pleasure 06/16/01 2:42:38 PM
3) Freedom 06/17/01 8:56:56 PM
4) Perfect Rose 06/23/01 12:05:08 PM
5) Silent Of The Lamb 07/08/01 9:44:42 PM
6) Stanley Night 06/14/01 9:53:32 PM
7) Gallery Crystal 07/08/01 1:56:22 AM Taking Macro pictures of things with "Viewable" size is easy.
8) Gallery Panorama 06/17/01 1:45:42 PM The panorama photos are not as good as old models. With my Canon A5, I can take vertical and matrix photos (with visual guide) but Canon A20 only has horizontal.
9) Gallery Things 06/13/01 9:26:50 PM The Macro is not too "Macro". It probably got the worst Macro for cameras with similar price. But the picture quality is good. Bigger but uglier is not much better than smaller and prettier.
10) Tips Accessories 06/30/01 10:20:02 PM Why would anyone use regular batteries? If you are that rich, give it to the poor. If you only use this camera occassionally (e.g. 30 photos / trip), then you can buy those cheap $10 Nimh charger. For heavy usage, 1600mah Nimh is a must. My config is - Maha 204f 3 hour charger. 3 sets of Nexcell 1600mah batteries + 1 set of Maha 1600mah Powercell batteries. 2 sets of the Nexcell batteries last more than 200 photos with heavy LCD usage and flash. 1 set of Nexcel and the other Maha batteries only last 30 to 60 photos before it die. So it's a matter of luck how well you batteries perform. With LCD off, you basically can take photos indefinitely. The nimh batteries will lost around 1% power/day, faster if warmer, slower if cooler. It happens to all nimh batteries. You can buy the batteries from thomas-distributing.com I paid US$70 for my 4 sets plus 1 Maha fast charger. They give you lots of free junks (one is a free table cleaning cloth). It's free. It's better than nothing.
11) Tips Exposure 06/02/01 6:26:56 PM One of the limited "manual" feature is exposure compensation. It's a one-click feature. Pretty useful and practical.

1. Relatively small
2. Pretty good picture quality
3. Unlimited powers with extra NiMh batteries
4. Easily accessible for frequently used features
5. Can remember date and preference after battery change.
6. Cheap

Con (in sequential importance):

1. lack of manual features.
2. 1 secnod shutter is a bit short
3. Poor focusing in low light (fixed in firmware upgrade)
4. Limited Macro
5. Viewfinder not very useful (but I never use it anyway)

Questions:

Will I buy Canon A20 again if I make the purchase now?
Yes, there is a 100% chance I will end up with the same camera. I have already known the weakness before my purchase.

Who is this camera for?
Not for people who want to "play" with their cameras. There's a "lack of manual features" with this camera. I used to have two SLR cameras (I lost both). Switching to a point and shot camera is pathetic. But I guess if my secondary objective (taking photos) is hindering my primary objective (travel) then it is even more pointless. So I settle with A20 and is quite happy with it. My number one priority is it fits into my pocket (for convenient and security reason). It also takes "pretty good" photos (compare with camera in similar price, the photos are excellent). The power is easily accessible (can use AA batteries in emergency).

Bottom line: This is an extremely useful and practical camera with not much fancy features.