The new A570 IS may look familiar, but it holds some surprise in store. The highlights then? A 4x optical zoom, support for add-on lenses and accessories, a large 2.5-inch LCD and infinitely useful lens-shift type (optical) image stabilization. It looks almost identical to some of the other A-series cameras such as A530, A540, A550 and the A560 – but look closely and you'll see the removable lens ring where the add-on lens (telephoto or wide angle) can be attached. Like others, it uses 2 AA batteries and you'll get at least 300 shots (in mixed conditions) with a set of fully charged 2500 mAh Ni-MH batteries. Alkaline batteries can be used when you don't have access to a charger – a feature that completely makes up for the extra bulk.

It can take VGA (640 x 480 pixel) movies at 30 fps with mono sound and a 4 GB file size limit. Video quality was good in all aspects, though you should avoid using the zoom in video. It takes about a second to power up and has a recycling time of 1 second with the flash & preview off, and 4 seconds with the flash on. With burst mode, you can take five or six photos in quick succession at the largest file size and highest quality, before it starts to slow down (averages out to about 1.5 frames per second).

Petite & cute, but puts up quite a fight!

Additionally, you get a range of scene modes like beach, fireworks, kids & pets, night, landscape etc; and full manual control as a big bonus. Once you start experimenting by setting your own shutter speed and aperture values, you can have a lot of fun. (see our step by step guide to special effects with bulb photography in this issue itself). Image quality was excellent all round, except with ISO-400 and higher, where noise ruins any image you take.

There are a few other gripes; there is a fair bit of parallax error (the image seen through the viewfinder is not what is actually recorded) at close distances. It doesn't feel as fast as it should, especially considering DIGIC III. But at the price, neither you nor I should be complaining. Buy it for extreme ease of use and excellent value for money.