Canon has announced the debut of the PowerShot A510, a 4x-zoom, 3.2Mp mid-range digital compact camera, to be available early February.

border=0 /><BR></div> </p> <p> The A510 is the successor to the A75. Canon claims that it is 13 per cent smaller and 20 per cent lighter than the A75. It features 20 shooting modes, VGA movies, a built in flash and direct printing. </p> <p> The lens is equivalent to a 35mm 35-140mm zoom and has a maximum aperture of between f/2.6 and 5.5. Canon claims that the 9-point rear focus system gives more efficient focussing to limit power consumption. </p> <p> The 20 shooting modes include eight

Movie clips of up to 3 minutes with sound can be recorded. The camera includes the ability to cut and edit in-camera. It also offers a 1.8-inch LCD and a flash with a guide number of 18 at ISO 100.

The camera includes a Print/Share button for direct printing to any PictBridge compatible printer. A 16MB MMC card is included. Software includes ZoomBrowser EX for Windows and ImageBrowser for Mac, PhotoStitch and PhotoRecord, plus photo manipulation software ArcSoft PhotoStudio.

The camera will be available from early February for £170 plus VAT.