Canon PowerShot SD980IS 12.1MP Digital Camera with 5x Ultra Wide Angle Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3-inch LCD (Silver) by Canon
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Digital camera reviews of Canon PowerShot SD980IS 12.1MP Digital Camera with 5x Ultra Wide Angle Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3-inch LCD (Silver)
Digital camera Review: Canon used to be great! What happened?
Summary: 1 Stars
This was my 3rd Canon and I expected image quality to be at least as good or better than my SD800. Wrong. Quality was awful. Very flat photos. I suppose I could've played around with it more than 3 days and get good photos but I'm referring to "auto" mode. That's what P&Ss are for. I didn't want to have to tweak every shot. Even the auto setting for day/outdoor wasn't that great. So I returned it for a Panny ZS3.Digital camera Review: Decent camera out of the box, GREAT camera with the proper tweaks.
Summary: 5 Stars
Do NOT make conclusions on this camera based on your first impressions! After initially using this camera, I prepared a review that was going to blast it into the ground, and I was ready to return it. I decided to hold off and play with it some more, and I'm glad I did.
Background:
I'm no avid photographer, nor am I a digital camera expert. I owned a Canon SD800 for a 2+ years and loved it. All of my friends have Canons and they were all impressive (SD550, SD790, SD1100, etc), but the SD800 was the perfect camera to me. Perfect size, weight, comfort, speed, functionality, and durability. It was extremely practical yet very efficient, all the while managing to look stylish and produce great results. I've come to expect these characteristics from all Canons, so I had pretty high expectations when I bought the latest and supposed-to-be greatest in the Elph series.
Picture quality: Out of the box, you might be disappointed. The Auto mode is underwhelming at best, and at worst, just bad in indoor/low light situations. You might as well not even use Auto mode. Thanks to some very helpful tips from another reviewer ("Radu Privantu"), with the right settings, this Digital Elph can take spectacular photos. Turn down the Sharpness and Contrast, and play around with the exposure. Also, like Radu P pointed out in his review, your best bet is to remain in the lower ISO settings (I have great results with ISO 80). These settings have consistently produced the best results.
Long Shutter mode makes shooting good low-light photos a reality, provided you have a steady hand and a steady subject.
Design: From most angles, this camera is as sleek and stylish as any other Canon. From the back, the overall design and specifically the button area looks very plain and almost toy-ish. It has a nice size and weight to it (though it is slightly longer and more narrow than other cameras). A few things though make me feel like I have to handle the camera with extreme caution. For one, there are no distinct grooves or anything to rest against your fingers. Also, the texture of the camera itself has very little friction or grip, so it feels like it can slip out of your hands. At least on the SD800 I could use the mode dial as a grip point for my right thumb, but this camera has no such luxury. There is the D-pad, but it'd be hard to use that as the grip point because I'd accidentally press a button. I don't see myself taking too many one-handed snapshots with this one because of this.
Menu system: They swapped their old tried and true menu system (cross-style, red and black) for something that is little more aesthetically pleasing but slightly less practical. Some things you're used to finding in one area will be found in another. Not a problem for the most part but it may require a few extra menu sequences. For instance, the delete function (using the D-Pad) requires a 4 button sequence (SET-->SET-->RIGHT-->SET) versus the previous 2 button sequence (DOWN-->SET, or was it DOWN-->RIGHT-->SET?). Not a huge deal, but after using Canons for so long it might be difficult to adjust.
Also worth noting, navigating through the menus or scrolling through photos is not as snappy as previous Elphs.
Touchscreen: I'm not crazy about touchscreen gadgets myself because of how impractical they are versus a set of keys or buttons. That said, I found it functional and efficient for the most part. I opted for the SD980 because it offered both the D-Pad and the touchscreen controls (kudos to Canon for that), but I do prefer using the D-Pad. I didn't have any problem bouncing back and forth between the two like some online reviews said they did.
I originally wanted to call the touchscreen what it is, a blatant gimmick... But it's much more than that. The touch focus feature is a godsend! Great for shots that you can't count on the autofocus to render. The touchscreen also allows for some on-the-fly adjustments, such as exposure, though I wish they would've utilized more of the screen real estate (along the black side bars) to add more on-the-fly adjustments. Would've liked more flexibility with the four Street Fighter-esque playback gestures. They're customizable, but they don't offer a large array of options you can set it to.
The LCD quality is average. At 3" you expect to be blown away with a bright, crisp picture, but output can be fuzzy. This is to be expected though, and it is how most touchscreen gadgets are.
The screen itself is a smudge magnet. And it doesn't sink in very far from the surface of the camera, leaving it more vulnerable to scratches. Not sure how scratch-resistant it is but I'm not going to use mine to test it ;). I bought a 3" screen protector but it ended up being way too small, so be wary of purchasing one.
There is also some light bleeding out of the edges of the screen. Not really noticeable unless the onscreen picture is dark.
Active Display: Useless piece of technology. I'd rather Canon not waste their time and effort to give us the ability to flick our camera around like a Wii remote just to scroll to the next image. It takes impractical to a whole new level. Yeah, it will ooh and ahh your friends, but I could never imagine using it when I just want to scroll through pictures. Especially taking into account that the camera has little grip (and it's not like you're always going to have the wriststrap on at all times). Someone just might end up tossing this thing into a wall. This feature doesn't directly take anything away from the product, and you can even turn it off, but I'd rather Canon put their efforts towards something a bit more useful.
Battery life: Decent, but haven't taken it through a real world test of all-day use. So far, I'd say it's what you'd expect in battery life when dealing with a large touchscreen and HD video. Something else to note is that the battery and in turn the camera get HOT. Not burning hot, but I don't remember older Canons getting this hot.
Video: Pretty HD. It does what it needs to do. Contrary to popular belief, (1) you CAN zoom, and (2) you can record longer than 10 minutes, depending on the size of your memory card of course. Also something to note, the sound that is recorded while operating the zoom dial isn't a dealbreaker, but know that it is there and it is noticeable.
Final thoughts:
The Canon SD980 does have some shortcomings, but it also does a ton of things right. Any product should perform at its best right out of the box, but don't let that take away too much from what this product's best could be with the right tweaks, because it stands up admirably against other upper tier point-n-shoots. The touchscreen turned out to be more than just a gimmick, with 'touch focus' being the best feature any of the Digital Elphs have to offer, IMO.
I recommend this camera to anyone WILLING to give it a chance and not write it off after the first 10 minutes of use. You won't regret it.
Other thoughts:
I think many of the bad reviews out there are a bit unfair. Does it really deserve 1 out of 5 stars just because it doesn't meet YOUR expectations? Only an off-brand Walmart-exclusive camera that takes no better pictures than my cell phone should warrant a 1 star rating. Taking into consideration what this camera offers compared to other PnS cameras with similar specs, no legitimate review should be under 3 stars. I know everyone has their own opinion, but look at it realistically. If you feel this camera deserves 1 star or even 2, what would you rate the aforementioned off-brand Walmart camera? Please use perspective when reviewing. I officially rate this camera a 4/5, but I'm going to give it a 5 to balance out the ridiculous 1-star ratings.
***EDIT 9/17/09 - Uploaded some sample pictures to Amazon's gallery. I was just messing around with some of the different modes.
Digital camera Review: Disappointed
Summary: 2 Stars
I took this out of the box, charged it up and took 10 pictures. The noise was awful at 400 ISO and the pictures looked like the color had been desaturated. Also has a plastic body that feels cheap. The touch screen was not as responsive as I expected it to be, but I may just be spoiled by my iPhone and expecting too much on that account - it did work I just had to apply a little more pressure. I put it back in the box within an hour and returned it. My Canon SD1100IS takes a better picture even without the upgraded tech features.Digital camera Review: Disappointing picture quality, mediocre touchscreen
Summary: 2 Stars
After reading the mixed reviews of this camera, I was skeptical but decided to give the SD980 a try because I really wanted the 24mm wide angle lens. It was time to replace my 5 year old Canon Powershot S410 which has been a truly great camera. Bottom line is that the SD980's picture quality is noticeably worse than my S410 from 2004. Tons of noise and even if you force the camera to ISO 80, you get less noise but the images still aren't very sharp. Wide shots also suffer from a lack of detail along the edges. The touch screen was ok but if you're shooting one handed, it was too easy to tap the screen by mistake and cause problems. Personally I prefer tactile buttons over the mushy touchscreen (there are good touchscreen interfaces, such as the iPhone, but the SD980 is nothing like that). I thought Canon was the leader in the point and shoot arena but now I'm reconsidering. If all you want this for is snapshots, it'll probably be fine. The camera is very pocketable, it's so light you could even forget you have it with you. Maybe I'm too picky but my SD980 was returned after a few days of shooting - $[...] was too much for grainy photos without much detail.
The Canon S90 and Panasonic LX3 are not really in the same segment as the SD980 but I'm going to give them a try next weekend and see if either works any better.
Digital camera Review: Dissapointed
Summary: 2 Stars
First of all let me just say that I really wanted to love this camera. The design looks great, it feels solid in your hands, the wide-screen touch screen is fun to use, and the ultra wide angle lens opens up tons of creative possibilities. Sadly I fell out of love very quickly after taking some test shots with this camera.
I compared my test shots to my previous pocket cam, a 6MP Casio which produces satisfactory photos in good light and poor photos in low light conditions.
I love the twilight photos I was able to take with this camera while walking around Union Square in San Francisco. The colors were great, photos had good detail, the street lights sparkled and most of the photos came out relatively sharp thanks to the stabilized lens. I was thrilled that the photos were much better than what I was able to produce with the Casio.
Indoors in the evening the camera work just as well for such a small camera, I took very few flash photos, but all the available light photos I took in a dimly lit living room turned out very well for such a small camera. Sure there was plenty of noise if you looked at the low light photos up close, but over all the immages were ery pleasing to the eye when viewed on a 1080P, 52" HDTV.
Then I took the camera outside on a sunny day. Colors were decent, but the photos were very soft as if the lens were dirty. This was especially noticeable when taking photos of trees, flowers, grass.... anything detailed looked blurred, buildings and people looked fine. Daytime photos also lacked contrast, giving them a very flat quality. I tired different settings, I activated the enhanced contrast setting, it helped a little. I activated the foliage setting and it improved the detail as well, but my old Casio still produced better photos in auto mode when compared side by side on my HDTV. I left the camera on auto ISO mode and most of the daytime photos were taken at 80 to 120 ISO.
Canon made a good camera when they designed the SD980, I just think they stuffed too many pixels into such a little camera and as a result the photos are very noisy, lack detail, and exhibit poor dynamic range.