Canon PowerShot A1200

UPDATE 07/07/2011: In line with our new, tighter test criteria, the Canon PowerShot A1200 is now a two-star camera rather than a three-star camera as it has no optical stabilisation system.

Two years after the A1100, Canon is back with the PowerShot A1200, which still runs on AA batteries, still has an optical viewfinder and still has a 12-Megapixel CCD. However, the new model has an equivalent wide angle of 28 mm and has been stripped of its stabilisation system. The recommended retail price has been seriously cut too, as you can pick up the A1200 for around £80.

Handling

Entry-level cameras are usually big plastic blocks with a rather approximative build quality and assembly. In this respect, the A1200 lives up to all expectations, as it's made from hard, quite unpleasant plastics and the battery compartment door wobbles even when it's shut. However, the buttons on the back of the camera and the mode-selection dial feel sturdy. They're nice to use and sensitive enough so that you don't have to over-press them. Plus, the 'half-press' position of the shutter-release button is easy to find. On the whole then, the A1200 is actually a surprisingly pleasant camera to use.

The right-hand side of the camera bulges out to make room for the AA batteries. This also makes a kind of mini grip handle, which certainly helps you keep hold of the camera. In that respect, we quite like its design.


Unfortunately, the screen isn't quite as convincing. The 2.6-inch LCD has a definition of 230,000 dots, which is very much down at the entry-level end of the quality scale. It goes without saying that the vertical viewing angles are ridiculously tight, so you'll only be able to see what you're doing when you're directly in line with the screen. What's more, colour reproduction and contrast are way off the mark.

The A1200 is a very easy camera to use. It only has a few settings, but the controls are clear and have been well thought out. It also has an interesting 'live' mode, which allows you to adjust the exposure levels, saturation and colour temperature using the kind of cursor-type system often seen in TVs.

Compared to the competition, we found that Canon's A1200 was actually a nice enough camera to use, even if it's clearly nothing revolutionary.

Responsiveness

The PowerShot A1200 is a little on the slow side, taking three seconds to start up and take its first picture, and a further three seconds to save a photo. Although we hate to admit it, the Rollei CL 350 is actually a tiny bit faster!


The same can be said of the autofocus too, as although the A1200 holds up fine in decent light—focusing in under a second—it falls apart completely in low-light conditions. Canon has clearly saved some cash by equipping this low-cost camera with ageing internal electronics, as the A1200 is more than twice as slow as the best models out there.

Picture Quality

This section is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, the A1200 does better than quite a lot of entry-level cameras that use the same 12-Megapixel CCD, as pictures taken at 400 ISO are still perfectly usable.

On the other hand, at 800 ISO things really go downhill, and even 8" x 10" (20 x 27 cm) prints at this ISO setting are best avoided due to heavy smoothing and visible digital noise (bearing in mind that this sensitivity setting is now more-or-less usable in mid-range compacts). The limits of the A1200 are all the more disappointing since the lack of stabilisation often makes the camera push up the ISO setting to try and get a clear shot.



The lens shows typical performances at wide-angle settings with pictures that are fairly sharp in the middle but hazier around the edges. It's nothing too bothersome though, and the difference in sharpness will barely be noticeable on an 8" x 10" (20 x 27 cm) print. There's also a speckling of chromatic aberration that higher-end models would be able to correct automatically.

At telephoto settings, this camera is an excellent surprise. Levels of sharpness in the middle of the frame are comparable to at wide-angle settings, but the real good news is that the lens is incredibly consistent—even the corners of the frame are perfectly clear. Chromatic aberration disappears too and the image is actually very good quality.


One major downside of this camera is its lack of stabilisation, which in turn means the camera's shutter needs to open and close very quickly to try and capture clear, sharp pictures. In our Barbie test shots, a shutter speed under 1/30 sec gave results that were quite random and generally unreliable. Seeing as the lens isn't very fast (f/5.9 at maximum zoom, f/4 at 60 mm for the Barbie shot), the camera needs to compensate by pushing up the ISO setting to increase sensitivity. This soon reaches 800 ISO and over—bearing in mind that 800 ISO is as high as you want to be going with this camera if you want to keep noise in check.

Video

The A1200 may have a 720p HD video mode but that doesn't automatically make it any good. With an over-contrasted picture, no optical zoom, a poor-quality digital zoom and loads of fuzzy noise in low light, picture quality isn't very good. The mono microphone records a muffled and confused sound that could certainly be better. It's still better than the VGA video mode found in most other entry-level cameras, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's worthwhile.