Ixus success (Canon Digital Ixus 970 IS)

Member Name: geek_squad

Product:	Canon Digital Ixus 970 IS
Date:	25/07/09 (29 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good battery stamina, no long delays when processing, photos are sharp and clear

Disadvantages: Not a wide angle lens, quality of photo may be dependent on the lighting conditions

The Canon Ixus 970 IS, a camera that features a smooth and sleek design style. The size of the lens makes you wonder about the capabilities of the camera in terms of zoom. The t10 megapixel compact, is armed with a 37mm to 185mm lens, that explains its 5x zoom which is not the highest, but it is quite substantial for normal photography and the occasional distant zoom. The camera is also decent when taking photos in crowed places, that can sometimes be disastrous.

The display screen is quite good, with sharp and clear images, it is also easy to view it from a wide range of angles. It also has a good colour contrasts and brightness settings which makes it a good representation of the image captured.

It also has an optical viewfinder, however it is not terrible accurate. Which should be a huge problem, since most photographers only use the optical viewfinder in the event that the battery is low, as an effort to conserve battery.

The camera is equipped with a wide range of manual settings that allow you to be creative and try different settings to try to suit each photograph perfectly, however it lacks the ability to manually adjust the focus and a dedicated setting that uses shutter speed or aperture as its primary function.

In total there are 6 separate ISO settings that range from 80 to 1600, which is always useful when you want to get it just right to suit the lighting conditions.

When shooting in artificial lighting conditions, you can use the white balance to help to preserve true colours and prevent blunt colours. It also has eleven different scenery modes that quickly lets you adapt your camera for the different shots.

There is a short capture delay of a fraction of a second, which is the amount of time the camera takes to actually capture the image after you press the button. When shooting in normal mode, the camera will take 2 seconds to be ready in between single shots. If you enjoy occasional capturing sporting events that are high speed events, you will be pleased with camera ability to take 1 photo every 0.79 seconds, and it is also possible to continuously take them until there is no space left in the memory card or the battery runs out.

The camera also has an image stabiliser function that prevents blurs due to shakes or motion. The flash is powerful enough to equally distribute light to fill most average sized rooms. Although the camera does not have any build in memory, it comes supplied with a 32 megabytes Secure Digital card.

Its battery stamina is quite good giving a reasonably long running time from a single charge. The quality of the video captured is also decent, with a good frame rate and colour contrast even in dull conditions.

Summary: This is a good camera for a keen photographer, but you might need to use manual settings

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