Good to average speed for a consumer camera.

The Canon PowerShot A560's performance ranges from quite fast to just average, though its flash recycle time is quite slow, at 10.5 seconds. Shutter lag is very good at wide angle, about average at telephoto, and very fast when the camera is "prefocused" by half-pressing and holding down the shutter button before the final exposure. Shot-to-shot cycle times are on the good side of average, at about 1.36 seconds for large/superfine JPEGs, and the camera captures frames continuously at this rate with a fast enough memory card (no pause for buffer memory to empty). Continuous-mode speed is a tad slow at 1.35 frames/second, though again, the camera captures frames continuously at this rate until the card is full. Flash recycling time is definitely on the slow side of average at 10.5 seconds after a full-power shot. Connected to a computer, however, download speeds are very fast, so you won't feel a need for a separate card reader. Bottom line, the A560 is responsive enough for most family photo opportunities, but its standard continuous shooting mode may be a bit slow for sports or wiggly kids. Those issues aside, overall performance is pretty good.

Battery
Shorter battery life with standard AA alkaline cells, but much better life with NiMH rechargeables.

The Canon PowerShot A560 uses two AA batteries for power, and a set of ordinary alkaline batteries are included with the camera. Though runtimes are increased with the NiMH batteries over alkalines, we strongly recommend you pick up a couple of sets of good-quality NiMH rechargeable batteries and a good-quality charger, as they'll save you many times their cost over the life of the camera.

The table above shows the number of shots the camera is capable of (on either a fresh set of disposable batteries or a fully-charged rechargeable battery as appropriate), based on CIPA battery-life and/or manufacturer standard test conditions.

(Interested readers can find an English translation of the CIPA DC-002 standards document here. (180K PDF document))

Storage
The A560 accepts SDHC/SD/MMC memory cards, and a 16MB card is included with the camera.

We strongly recommend buying a large capacity SDHC/SD memory card at least a 512 MB card, preferably a 1 GB or 2GB one, to give yourself extra space for extended outings. (Check the shopping link above, cards are really cheap these days, so no reason to skimp.)