Customer Rating: 
Summary: Awesome camera
Comment: This camera is awesome. I tried several Kodak cameras first -CX7430, DX7440, CX7300 before settling in on this jewel. I really wanted in a big way to use the easyshare stuff for printing and ease of use. I tried to make the Kodaks work but the Kodaks seem to have underpowered flashes. I got lots of blurry and dim shots with the kodaks. The A85 has a dynamic flash and an auto focusing lamp to help focus in dim light. I had much better results with this canon. I highly recommend it. I am even using the picbridge capablity of the A85 connected to a kodak EasyShare printer dock plus -- Awesome results. There is no question that this camera focuses extremely well. Colors are very representative. The biggest negative to the camera is the cheesy plastic cover over the compact flash (the design for this is horrible). But the power of the camera smooths this negative over very quickly. I get an occasional fuzzy shot once in a blue moon (unlike the kodaks I tried - every third shot in the lighting of my home). I would have loved it if cannon would upgrade to USB 2.0 for faster transfer, but the kodaks I tried were USB 1.1 as well. If you are looking for a great point and shoot with room to grow (including manual focus), look no further. This camera rocks. Be sure to buy a rayovac 15 min charger and their NMH batteries (they will save you tons of money).
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good camera, but not the improvement I had hoped for
Comment: I bought the Canon A85 as an upgrade to my 5-year-old Canon S10. I liked the slightly smaller size, doubling the pixels, and greater optical zoom. I wanted to take advantage of improvements made over the last 5 years. Immediately impressed with ergonomics -- grip, buttons and playback zoom are excellent. The camera just feels great, and the price is unbelievably low. However, in doing picture comparisons with my S10, I'm saddened that the picture quality of the A85 is not as good as the old S10. Even with double the pixels, many details are not as crisp and colors are not as accurate -- more oranges and pinks. I am a point-and-shoot picture-taker, and yet I want the pictures as clear and accurate as possible. I liked this camera better before I did the side-by-side picture comparison with the old S10. I still think the A85 is an excellent, affordable camera -- but I may be putting it under the Christmas tree for someone else.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Love it
Comment: Not an experienced photographer, and first digital camera, but took on a vacation and loved the resulting pictures. Especially loved the flower setting for closeups and the scenic setting for stitching a bunch of pictures together for a panoramic view. Easy, easy, easy! And beautiful! Only feature I had trouble with was the fireworks feature, I could never stay still enough for the longer exposure, so ended up with fuzzy night time pics. Probably a photographer fault and not the camera! A 256mb card with the camera set at 1024 x 768 allows for 700 pictures, The 400 I took came out beautiful in 4 x 6 prints.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent camera!
Comment: THE GOOD: Excellent images, fast 9-point autofocus, full manual/shutter priority/aperture priority modes. Scene modes are very effective. Very strong flash unit with fast recycle time. Menu system is easy to navigate. Fast startup/next-shot delay. Excellent battery life on 2300mAh NiMH cells.
THE NOT SO GOOD: It's kinda big, because it uses 4 AA cells. Battery life is worse on alkalines , but still acceptable. Camera-computer transfer is slow due to USB 1.1. Movie files can get big if shot at 640*480 (500Kbytes/sec)
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A 256MB card will store 124 highest resolution/lowest compression images, or 375 seconds of highest resolution video.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Best Camera Ever
Comment: I love this camera. I has so many wonderful features... the flip out screen (used to protect the screen, shoot from odd angels, take pictures of yourself that you can line up), the option to hold the picture you just took to share (you know everyone wants to see the picture after it's taken and it takes just too long on normal digital cameras to load the picture).
A great buy!!!
Summary: Awesome camera
Comment: This camera is awesome. I tried several Kodak cameras first -CX7430, DX7440, CX7300 before settling in on this jewel. I really wanted in a big way to use the easyshare stuff for printing and ease of use. I tried to make the Kodaks work but the Kodaks seem to have underpowered flashes. I got lots of blurry and dim shots with the kodaks. The A85 has a dynamic flash and an auto focusing lamp to help focus in dim light. I had much better results with this canon. I highly recommend it. I am even using the picbridge capablity of the A85 connected to a kodak EasyShare printer dock plus -- Awesome results. There is no question that this camera focuses extremely well. Colors are very representative. The biggest negative to the camera is the cheesy plastic cover over the compact flash (the design for this is horrible). But the power of the camera smooths this negative over very quickly. I get an occasional fuzzy shot once in a blue moon (unlike the kodaks I tried - every third shot in the lighting of my home). I would have loved it if cannon would upgrade to USB 2.0 for faster transfer, but the kodaks I tried were USB 1.1 as well. If you are looking for a great point and shoot with room to grow (including manual focus), look no further. This camera rocks. Be sure to buy a rayovac 15 min charger and their NMH batteries (they will save you tons of money).
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good camera, but not the improvement I had hoped for
Comment: I bought the Canon A85 as an upgrade to my 5-year-old Canon S10. I liked the slightly smaller size, doubling the pixels, and greater optical zoom. I wanted to take advantage of improvements made over the last 5 years. Immediately impressed with ergonomics -- grip, buttons and playback zoom are excellent. The camera just feels great, and the price is unbelievably low. However, in doing picture comparisons with my S10, I'm saddened that the picture quality of the A85 is not as good as the old S10. Even with double the pixels, many details are not as crisp and colors are not as accurate -- more oranges and pinks. I am a point-and-shoot picture-taker, and yet I want the pictures as clear and accurate as possible. I liked this camera better before I did the side-by-side picture comparison with the old S10. I still think the A85 is an excellent, affordable camera -- but I may be putting it under the Christmas tree for someone else.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Love it
Comment: Not an experienced photographer, and first digital camera, but took on a vacation and loved the resulting pictures. Especially loved the flower setting for closeups and the scenic setting for stitching a bunch of pictures together for a panoramic view. Easy, easy, easy! And beautiful! Only feature I had trouble with was the fireworks feature, I could never stay still enough for the longer exposure, so ended up with fuzzy night time pics. Probably a photographer fault and not the camera! A 256mb card with the camera set at 1024 x 768 allows for 700 pictures, The 400 I took came out beautiful in 4 x 6 prints.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent camera!
Comment: THE GOOD: Excellent images, fast 9-point autofocus, full manual/shutter priority/aperture priority modes. Scene modes are very effective. Very strong flash unit with fast recycle time. Menu system is easy to navigate. Fast startup/next-shot delay. Excellent battery life on 2300mAh NiMH cells.
THE NOT SO GOOD: It's kinda big, because it uses 4 AA cells. Battery life is worse on alkalines , but still acceptable. Camera-computer transfer is slow due to USB 1.1. Movie files can get big if shot at 640*480 (500Kbytes/sec)
---
A 256MB card will store 124 highest resolution/lowest compression images, or 375 seconds of highest resolution video.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Best Camera Ever
Comment: I love this camera. I has so many wonderful features... the flip out screen (used to protect the screen, shoot from odd angels, take pictures of yourself that you can line up), the option to hold the picture you just took to share (you know everyone wants to see the picture after it's taken and it takes just too long on normal digital cameras to load the picture).
A great buy!!!