I have found this camera to be surprisingly resilient to the repeated abuse I have given it. It's not been left completely untarnished, but it still KIND OF works.

When I left it outside in the sand during a thunderstorm in the fair town of Dirt, Louisiana, it woke up in the morning QUITE gritty and the buttons were a little stubborn, but it still worked perfectly. Photos are of beautiful quality.

I've banged it around the Caribbean without a care in the world, and while it was always a bit too slow to take successive photos of Puerto Rican farmers getting into a bar fight, it held up quite well.

Real problems came after I dropped the poor thing into a hot spring in the Andes of Venezuela. Luckily, I was able to retrieve it, but it would never be the same again. The LCD is completely trashed and unusable and the flash is now nonexistent, but the durn thing still takes pictures!! I can't believe it, either. As long as I'm outside in the sun, photos and video turn out great and transfer effortlessly to my computer.

In short, this camera will take a lot of wear. It's a great camera to take on adventures (especially to places that don't have lithium batteries!), but go easy on the hot springs.

I'm still wondering how could Canon create such a bad product. I was stupid enough for not read customer reviews before buying it.
The A300 will eat a pair of batteries (even those with more than 2000 mAh) every 10 to 20 minutes, if you're lucky and keep LCD and flash off. It will take a century to respond after you press the shot button and another century to process the picture.
I tried to contact Canon but I guess their customer support is just like their camera - it doesn't work!
Do yourself a favor: don't buy a Cannon A300.
Paulo May - Brazil

This was a great first camera for me and I feel like I got WAY more than I paid for. 3.2MP and high resolution allowed me to touch up in Photoshop and still allowed fantastic print quality. Video recorder has audio. There is no Optical Zoom, which is why I decided to get another camera after I felt like I've "graduated" from this one. Buy, Ni-MH rechargeable batteries. They last WAY longer and this way, you won't have to own your own battery company to like this camera.
Oh, and since Canon cameras all have digic chip processor and pretty much the same operating format, after you're done with this camera, you won't have any trouble when you upgrade to any of the fancier Canon models.

I recently purchased this camera with high expections. So far the jury is still out. This is a good beginners camera, and beginners will love the picture quality vs that of 35 mm. I also love the fact of being able to print pictures directly from the camera (with the printer it comes with) without having to use a pc. The cons are this camera goes through batteries. I am thinking about buying stock in a battery company. After pressing the shutter button, the camera takes it's time to produce the image. The user's guide is wordy. I just sat down one weekend and read through the guide and practiced with the features on my camera, only to have my batteries die out twice during the process.

I bougth this camera on January 2004 and I already sold it. Quality pictures was pretty good, but time between shots is really long. When you ask somebody to take a picture for you it is very very embarasing because many times the shutting button just doesn't work. I think this is not a good election to buy please check other trademarks since I have read this problem also occurs with other CANON cameras.

Sure, this camera has its drawbacks, but you'll never find a digital camera that is perfect. I wish it was more compact, I wish it always took perfect, in-focus pictures without me putting in any effort, and I wish it was faster, but one might say that about any digital camera. This is my first digital camera and I'm now ready to move on to a more modern camera that's more compact with better zoom and possibly more megapixels. But I'm not sorry that I bought this camera and when I bought it, it cost me about $300 or so. I am not an optimist and am by far the most cynical person I know and I still say this camera is a good buy, especially now that the price has plummeted.

My main reason for liking this camera is its durability. I've dropped it countless times (hard) and it remains in perfect physical & working condition. Many people complain about the FlashCard/battery door breaking on other models but this camera is a rock! The worst that happened when I dropped it is that the door swung open and the batteries came tumbling out. Each time, I thought "Oh, no! I broke it!" but soon realized it was intact and still working like normal. And most of the time, I toss it into my knapsack without putting it in a case first (tsk, tsk) and the camera is still going strong.

Also, with Canon cameras, many people get the E-18 error message or whatever it is on their screen and then their camera stops working completely. I believe this is caused by sand getting into the camera. I've never brought my camera onto the beach or anything, but I've had it not-so-clean places before and I never got that message with my trusty A300.

Many people have said that this camera eats batteries like crazy, and that's true, if you use regular AA Duracells or Energizers or what have you. I highly recommend you buy a set of 1 hour rechargeable batteries meant especially for digital cameras. I bought a charger that came with two sets of batteries for $20 and these digital camera batteries last MUCH longer than normal AAs. It's great! You can use one set of batteries while the other set charges (it only takes an hour!) So I have to wonder what kind of batteries these people who complain about the battery-eating are using.

Size: it is a bit bigger than you might hope for but it never mattered much to me. It won't fit in your pockets (unless you wear very baggy pants) but it fits just fine in my knapsack. But ladies, if you carry around a tiny purse, this will take up a lot of room in it. It would also be nice if it was a tad lighter.

I've gotten many great photos out of this camera. I would say about half come out good, half come out not-so-good. Two pictures I took with it came out so well that they won photo contests. I think it was fun to experiment with the 'flower' button and flash button, etc. I wish the mini-movies it takes didn't come out so dark. But it got the job done. It's pretty easy to use, too. I figured out how to use the camera quickly. I didn't even need the manual until it came time to download the pictures from my camera onto my computer (which also turned out to be easy).

The only thing that really bothers me is the very slow reaction time. Don't expect get any photos of your cat yawning, for example, or anything that happens that fast or faster. It takes a little while to load when you first turn the camera on before you can start taking pictures but I've gotten used to it. I would say that this is the A300's only major drawback. If you're in a hurry to snap a photo or if you want to take a picture of something fleeting (like a yawn), you might get very frustrated by the delay time (I have). But other than this problem, this sturdy camera was a breeze to use and I am happy to pass it on to my sister when I get a newer model.

See my two contest-winning photos that were taken by my A300 in the photo gallery ('Customer Images') for this product! They are the two rat pictures... Thanks for reading this and good luck!

This little camera is a great camera for someone who is new to photography. The settings that this little things has is wonderful. You can either run on autopilot and have it do the work for you or you can set the manual settings to your little hearts content. There are a few fun settings that you can add the background startup photo to one that you have taken or you can add your own sound tot he startup as well. The only downside that I found with this camera is that it is a little fragile and if you drop it you better pray that you can pick i up in one peice. The pictures I took with this are awesome and pleased me until I moved onto bigger and better things, I highly recommend this camera to anyone who would like a cheap camera that has excellent results.

Think SUV is a gas guzzler? Well, this camera is WORSE. We knew about its short battery life, but we bought it anyway. If you have to replace batteries after about 20 pictures w/ flash, that is NOT a minor flaw! Had we known just exactly how short the battery life was, we wouldn't have bought this camera. Forget about its user-friendliness. Don't make the same mistake as we did!

It might take ok pictures, it might be an entry level camera, but..IT'S CUMBERSOME TO USE AND THE BATTERIES DON'T LAST MORE THAN 15 MINUTES. PLEASE, DON'T BUY THIS PRODUCT....AVOID IT LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!!!!

I had it for few years and worked great for what I paied for it. I bought the new Canon SD700 and very happy form Canon stuff.

Don't expect $100.00 camera to do a $1000.00 camera's Job!!!!

Have owned this camera for a few years. Never happy with image quality. Battery life is sucked dry very rapidly. Much better cameras out there I'm sure, even back then...

The Powershot A300 is a good beginner's digital camera and the price is fairly decent. The actual picture quality is great in my opinion for a 3.2 mp camera. The build quality is also solid. I've owned this for three years and it still works like new. I would not claim to be a photographer or even a photo enthusiast, but I am definitely a gadget type of person. There are some decent features such as red eye reduction, landscape setting, ability to record short videos and 5.1 digital zoom.

The most substantial downside to the camera is the lack of physical zoom (i.e. telescoping lens). Because of this really any picture taken while in digital zoom is going to be pixelated. Secondly, pictures are difficult to recall. In order to get back to the taken picture you must cover the lens and then turn the camera off and then on again. Another problem is there are not many features to speak. However, considering the age of this camera I can't really say it is a problem. For the average person this is a perfect camera. It is easy to use, has great picture quality and is fairly cheap.

i got this camera a few years ago because i really like how their is a lens cover, it had a pretty good price for its features and it had a movie mode but i used norecharable bateries when i first got it you have to get 2500nah batteries for best results i recomend this camera for kids because its durable cheap easy to use and it dosn't have an optical zoom so the lens dosn't pop out which makes it easy to break but i lost it a year and a half ago but now im geting the powershot 570is hopefully its good too i hope this was helpful

I had this camera for a little over two years and it ate batteries like candy, had a confusing screen interface that malfunctioned frequently, then it just died, and was too expensive to fix. It wasn't misused, and I have a bunch of other cameras, mostly 35mm, that I've used for 25 years or more without breakage, my first was a Canon AT1. But this camera was nothing short than disposable and disappointing. Too bad, I never would've expected that from Canon previously.