Others say...

"A Winner all the way."
This is a great point and shoot Camera:

Pros:
- Sturdy, literally unbreakable. My kid has thrown this camera around but no damage done.
- Takes sharp pictures for a 6mp Camera. I will upload some of the pictures I have shot with this camera.
- For manual control freaks, this camera has enough manual control to play around with.
- Uses 2 AA rechargeable batteries. Buy a 15 minute charger and you are all set. No need to buy li-ION batteries.

Cons:
- After handling the Elphs, this one looks a little bulky, however I have not complaints with it's size what so ever.
- Is an old camera so is definitely slower between two pictures, again I have had not complaints with that.

All in all, for the price this is a great great camera. I upgraded to an XTi and bought an ELPH, but this camera is staying with me. I also have a previous version of the A540, the A520 extremely happy with that one also.

"Canon PowerShot A540 6MP Digital Camera"
Excellent Camera the Picture quality is perfect. It has many functions that can be used for business purposes or just for fun indoors and out door. It has a automatic Red eye removal function that helps if you don't want to spend too much time reediting your photos once taken.
The zoom is excellent 4x it's a bit poor on memory but you can buy more quite cheep. It runs on butteries which help when you are up and about with the camera. A must have for the out door mobile enthusiasts.

"Good quality camera"
Bought this camera for my parents (70+ years old) about a year ago. It was fairly easy for them to learn and use. It takes good pictures. Batteries do not last long indoors using flash, so you definately need to get a good set of rechargable batteries for indoor use. Would recommend for anyone needing a medium to low end digital camera of good quality.

"OK, I've had it for a year..."
I wanted to use this camera for a while before reviewing it because it is my first camera and I am rather new to photography. But I have been doing my homework...

First the good stuff:

--I have to say the battery usage, or lack thereof is incredible. I bought rechargeable NiMH batteries and I have managed to fill up a 2GB card two and a half times with photos and video (occasionally using flash, almost always with the LCD on) and I have only had to replace the batteries _one time_. On a typical day of shooting for 3-4 hours I may replace the batteries one time. This was an issue I was concerned about, but I have been incredibly surprised, impressed and overjoyed by this. With the regular alkaline batteries that came with the camera, I took only 200+ pictures with the LCD on, flash on part of the time.

--6MP and 4x optical zoom, thats pretty good for cameras today. For most consumers this is as much as you will ever need, perhaps more than you need. Of course, give it a year and all the cameras will have 8MP and 6x.

--The user interface is pretty intuitive and easy for the average user to figure out, especially if you have used Canon before. The only camera I have ever used was my mothers A70 and I was easily able to navigate through the controls to do what I needed.

--The pictures look very good, the colors are beautiful and generally they are very sharp. The pictures I took last fall were very good. I found some of the automatic "scene" settings to be helpful as well, the "foliage" setting worked great to put emphasis on outdoor colors.

--An advantage over the A530: The user can manually select things like shutter speed and aperture priority. There is also an auto setting. For someone who is trying to learn photography a little instead of simply take pictures, this has helped me to experiment. Often I find that at times I may want less exposure time and am willing to sacrifice some brightness for the resulting sharpness.

--The camera does feel light and rather small in the hand, but its comfortable to hold.

A Few cons:

--Probably the main problem that would affect most people is that 5-7 second delay when using the flash. I can see how this would be an issue for some people who have children or want to take a lot of pictures in darkly lit areas. I rarely do this but if you are wanting to take a lot of pictures with flash in succession, this could be a major issue.

--In low light settings the photos are not great, something I had read about ahead of time in reviews. Taking good pictures on a rainy or overcast day can be a challenge. I was surprised how good some pictures looked when I recently went out on a dark foggy morning and took pictures.

--In movie mode there is noticeable motor noise picked up by the microphone when the camera adjusts to light changes and when zooming in and out. A minor quibble for those mostly wanting to take photos, but may be an annoyance for others who occasionally want to shoot video with the camera (like me, although I am not overly concerned with high quality video as with high quality pictures). A side note, movie mode does tend to take up a lot of memory, but you have the option to take fewer frames per second (15fps/30fps) and you can decrease the resolution.

--The memory card included with the camera is pretty worthless. Canon has included 16MB cards with cameras ever since the A70 and before, and yet the number of megapixels has more than doubled. Is it not time to increase the size of the card included? I found a good deal on a 2GB card and with that on the highest resolution and quality compression rates it will hold around 750 pictures.

--There are two instruction manuals included, one is a basic manual and the other a "advanced." I have to say that the advanced one is not as detailed as I would like. It explains what things do without telling you exactly why you would like to use this or that setting or when.

--Another minor quibble, I have noticed some "barrel distortion" (if you don't know what that is you probably do not need to worry about it, or you can look it up online) on close up pictures, this inevitably happens with every camera though, and is probably no more exaggerated here than with others.

The value for the money with this camera is very good. I managed to get it for $168 in January 2007.

"Balancing Compactness and Functionality"
I received this camera in 2006 as a Christmas gift and have been using it ever since. The great results that I get from this camera are comparable to most any other 6 megapixel compact digital camera. I have had a number of prints made, and pictures that were exposed properly (per the command of the photographer) produced an amazing amount of detail.

This camera boasts something that wasn't too common among non-DSLR digital cameras: manual functions. For those who are more hands-on and like to have a little more control over how the camera exposes the picture, this was great. I have been able to use this camera to my advantage to explore the effects of shutter speed, aperture, exposure compensation, etc. It has led me to seek the expanded capabilities of a digital SLR.

But the advanced user aside, the general person who needs a way to capture great shots in most situations will love the relatively small size and great picture quality of this 6MP camera.

I'll be using this as a companion/backup camera alongside a DSLR because the quality of the images is just too great to pass up right now.

Pros:
* Great image quality
* Good color reproduction
* Basic and advanced controls
* Uses AA batteries
* Comfortable to hold, seems well-built
* Can be used with optional adapters and filters

Cons:
* Generally poor flash performance indoors, not much help in daylight
* LCD has a somewhat low resolution; screen looks grainier than it should
* No image stabilization
* Flash recharges slowly on most batteries