Canon’s iconic ELPH has always been a show-off, with the looks and smarts that make you want to carry it out in the open for everyone to see. The PowerShot SD980 IS takes the concept even further with Canon’s first-ever touch panel interface. The camera that invented sleek and slim is equipped with a huge 3-inch PureColor System LCD screen that responds to your touch, delivering operation that’s as natural and intuitive as cutting-edge technology should be. Four opulent color options are the icing on the cake. Type – 1/2.3-inch type Charge Coupled Device (CCD) Lens – Canon 5x optical zoom Lens Focal Length – 4.3 (W) – 21.5mm f/2.8-f/5.9 (35mm equivalent – 24(W) – 120(T) mm) LCD Monitor – 3.0-inch TFT color LCD with wide viewing angle Shutter Speed – 15-1/3000 sec. ISO Sensitivity – Auto, ISO 80/100/200/400/800/1600 equivalent Exposure Control Method – Program AE, i-Contrast; AE Lock White Balance Control – Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, Custom Built-in Flash – Auto, Auto w/Red-eye Reduction, Flash On, Flash Off; FE lock, Safety FE, Slow Synchro Shooting Modes – Auto, P, Portrait, Foliage, Snow, Beach, Sunset, Fireworks, Aquarium, Underwater, ISO 3200, Indoor, Kids & Pets, Night Snapshot, Color Accent, Color Swap, Digital Macro, Stitch Assist, Long Shutter, Creative Light Effects, Movie Storage Media – SD/SDHC Memory Card, MultiMediaCard, MMCplus card, HC MMCplus card File Format – Still Image – Exif 2.2 (JPEG) Movie – MOV (Image – H.264; Audio – Linear PCM (Monaural)) Still Image – Up to 4,000 x 3,000 (Large); Movie – HD 1280 x 720 (30 fps) available up to 10 min. or 4GB per clip/640 x 480 (30 fps), 320 x 240 (30 fps) available up to 60 minutes per clip or 4GB Power Source – Lithium-ion Battery Dimensions (WxHxD) – 3.93 x 2.10 x 0.90 in. Weight – 4.59 ounces
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars Some suggestions to maximize the picture quality
There are lots of technical reasons behind the following recommendations. However here are a few “rules of thumb” should give you better pictures.
1) Use the lowest ISO available given your requirement for either aperture or shutter speed. To avoid getting technical, higher ISO always introduces higher noise. At issue is when it becomes noticeable. In newer dSLR cameras you can get over 1000, maybe well over depending on the camera, before the noise becomes noticeable. For this camera keeping it at or below 200 is a good idea.
2) Don’t use in-camera sharpening. Digital pictures will almost always benefit from sharpening but you are better off doing it as part of post processing with something like Adobe Photoshop Elements & Premiere Elements 7 [OLD VERSION] or ACDSee Photo Manager 2009. Compuer-based algorithms tend to be more sophisticated and you can better judge the results on your monitor as opposed to the camera LCD.
3) If you want more vivid colors and have the choice use sRGB instead of Adobe RGB. While you get fewer colors they are distributed over a wider range. They are also render better on computer monitors, many commercial labs, and any other place your pictures are likely to show up.
2 Stars Dissapointed
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.
5 Stars The Best In Its Class!!!
Ok so after reading so many negative reviews about this product, I decided to get my hand on one to find out. Lucky for me a close friend of mine bought it and I got a chance to run through it for a while. After playing with it for hours, I figured out that most of the negative reviews on this product are simply ridiculous and make no sense at all. So here is what I manage to work out with this spectacular camera.
Starting with the EXTERIOR:
The body of the SD980 is sleek, stylish, narrow and thin just like that of the SD960. It feels quite firm and durable for its size. Nothing less than SD800 or SD880 since some people mistaken this body as plastic but it is NOT plastic. The front cover and back is metallic and only the rims around camera has a rubbery feel to it. The buttons got cut short to only 2 buttons for playback and menu along with a dial like all recent SD series. So pretty much after a few minutes I got use to this camera like I was on any of the SD800 or SD880 and SD960. For those with larger hand, holding this camera with 1 hand is definitely will be somewhat of a challenge. There is a slight wavy grid near the playback button that suppose to serve as a grip but it only works for those with smaller hands. My hands are not too big or too small so I could actually use this camera with one hand without any problem.
The MENU & FEATURES:
Canon has replaced their menu with something new. Quite simple, pretty clear where everything suppose to be. All the shooting mode are together, ISO is easy set. Also has custom white balance nearby for those who know how to use it. Everything is push to the left side of the screen and all you have to do is scroll up and down and enter the sub menu to adjust the setting. I really like this layout since it somewhat give the camera a more stylish look on the menu instead of filling up your whole screen with menu and words. Also, Ive seen some of the previous reviews complaining about taking 2-4 steps to delete a picture. FOR GOODNESS SAKE PEOPLE READ THE ON SCREEN TIPS!!! It only take 1 easy step to delete the photo! On your playback screen, if you want to delete a photo all you have to do is press on the screen, drag your finger downward and to the left (backward L shape) and it will delete the image!!! Why would you go into the menu and go down to delete and then enter the sub-menu to delete? Ok so they DO have that option too but using the screen its not that hard! Canon made this camera so versatile that a monkey can work it. So you can scroll through the images in 3 different ways, how can ANYONE complain about that? In playback mode you can simply use the DIAL to press back and forth and navigate through the pictures the traditional way. Then you have the touch screen to slide the photo left right, tap to zoom in and double tap to zoom out. Also you got the motion sensing function, shake the camera up or down to change the image. 1 hand user can do this easily! Same for the Delete functions, there are 2 to 3 ways to can delete an image. So take your time and play with it a bit more to find out all of the functions.
The TOUCHSCREEN:
Canon decided to throw in a bonus touchscreen for this particular model and I must say its something new for the SD series. At first, you might have some awkward feeling since its not as sensitive as iPhone, however this is one of the more recent style of touchscreen where it require a bit more pressure so that you wont ACCIDENTALLY change any setting. Most of the phones now are this type of touchscreen not the iphone touchscreen. The recent Nokia N97 and other new phones like samsung touchscreen ones also used this kind of LCD that require a bit more pressure. After using it for a while I was already use to the touchscreen and flipping photos back and forth quite comfortably. The only problem Ive seen with the touch screen so far is the touch focus, sometime when your focus point is so small the camera dont know what you are trying to focus on but after 2 or 3 tries it does focus. Im getting the hang of it though. Again, as I was mentioning before, the touchscreen is a bonus to the dial pad, it allows you to do what a dial pad can also do but FASTER. So you can delete image, scroll through images, set flash, focus point, anything else with ease by using the touchscreen. I love this camera for this particular feature too.
IMAGE QUALITY:
The main portion of this review, image quality. So some of previous reviews mentioned about fuzzy photos. I dont know what you did wrong but I have my SD880, my sister’s SD800 and this D980 side by side shooting the same thing. When I open them up the images is about the same!!! Sharpness is pretty much the same I would say in some cases the SD980 is sharper! and the color is more vibrant than the other 2. Noise isnt so bad at 400 as few has mentioned. You must understand this is a 12mp, so more flaws will be seen at larger size, but to downsize to the same resolution, the images from the SD980 is probably better than the SD800 at most of the time. I have some amazing shots came out during my test play with this thing. The only “Fuzziness” I can see is from the hand shake at slow shutter or no flash mode. But even then i rarely get those, I do have very steady hand from shooting DSLR so I can hand hold this camera at 1 sec. I just love how I can use touch focus on anything anytime and it works well for me. This thing has so much manual functions that Im starting to like it more than SD880 or SD800. So there were a few comments about not having MANUAL. So I checked the SD880 and SD800 manual functions, and this camera can do pretty much everything the same in P mode! It can set Flash, ISO, Long Shutter, EXP Compensation, Slow Sync, Shooting mode, metering, WB, Macro with touch focus is NICE, you can even set how long the long shutter can be, how many shots to take when its on timer mode! Try doing that with the SD800! With such flexible settings I can get some really good images from playing around with these features. If you’ve only shot AUTO and wrote a review on this camera, I think you should give the camera another look, seriously. The Video is out of the question, crisp and wicked nice! Someone said you cant zoom during video and you hear the motor of the zoom. That is WRONG! YOU CAN ZOOM, for 5x optical, you only hear the motor zooming when you kick in the Digital zoom! I always avoid digital zoom anyways. So The HD video is a plus on this thing. 24mm wide allow me to get some really nice shot, I love the wide angle shot and very useful for me in some cases. Playing with ISO 400-800 I noticed the SD800 and SD880 also have really bad noise as well. To be fair, I also tried resize all of them to the same size of 8mp and sd980 is showing some very impressing image quality at that size. They are point and shoot, obviously they aren’t going to deliver amazing photos like 5DmarkII at 3200 ISO. So I think we should cut it some slack and move on with it. It’s doing fine and I think this one deliver what canon promised.
FINAL THOUGHT:
So Ive only used this camera from my friend in approximately 2-3 hours and I manage to work out everything he was complaining about (multiple steps to delete, lack of manual, reviewing images, so forth..). Now that he learned more about his new camera he no longer complain about it. He started to use the touchscreen more often as well. I like it so much I just ordered one for myself prior to writing this review. I just think people need to give their gadgets a bit more time as they explore the thing. Just because its a point and shoot doesnt mean you can think you’ve figure it all out in that first 10 minutes of using it. This camera pack a lot of punch. A lot of features are there but Ive not mentioned them like how you can sort out images, favorite them, tag them, sort it out into categories and folders, and locking images so on. It’s an amazing camera. As a person who shoot with a DSLR I must admit this thing is doing great. After I read so many negative reviews here I went on other professional photographers websites who own this particular camera to research more about it and there even was someone who said the image quality is so good he ignore everything else bad about the camera. So again, give it another look before you write the review. The camera was made so that you can have lots of options to work one function. I really dig the touchcreen + buttons combination, excellent thinking from Canon. Overall I give this camera a 5 because it’s excellent in image quality and ease of use, battery life isnt too bad either. I also gave it a 5 since I think people who gave it a 1 is not being fair to the camera. This camera can easily take the top standing in its class.
5 Stars Decent camera out of the box, GREAT camera with the proper tweaks.
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. Something to note is that the max consecutive record time is 10 minutes. Doesn’t bother me, since I only use it to capture little moments here and there. The sound that is recorded while operating the zoom dial isn’t a dealbreaker, but know that it is there and it is audible.
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.
1 Star What is Canon Thinking?
You may be confused by other reviews here. Some give 1 star, some give 4 or 5. Sharp pictures . . . terrible pictures. Which is it? Here’s the scoop:
In “Auto” mode, the camera chooses the ISO setting and that cannot be defeated. Unfortunately, the camera chose ~ISO 640 for all the test indoor flash pictures I took on Auto. These grainy images are far inferior to, say, the crisp, sharp images from the SD800is that I also have . . . er, well, had 
.
Note that using “P” mode and forcing ISO 80 gave very sharp images, comparable in all respects to those I took with the SD800is.
But user control of ISO is only available in Shooting Mode using settings “P” and “Long Shutter”. As a result, the graininess and quality of images in *ALL* other modes is unpredictable at best, and uniformly bad at worst.
The SD980is is in desperate need of a firmware update allowing the user to set the ISO or the maximum ISO range to be used in *any* mode. It may also be possible for the camera to give a warning if it would have chosen a higher ISO, and allow the user to either shoot or accept the camera’s choice.
Pros: On the plus side, the camera has many very nice features (eg, touch focus), what seems to be a good optical system, and a wide angle range that should make this camera the ideal travel companion. OTOH, Canon has gone from providing piles of paper manuals in multiple languages to none – just the CD versions. If you want to learn about the camera, either study up at home or bring your laptop with you.
My opinion: Unfortunately, the absence of effective user control over ISO and the resulting uncertainty and/or inferior images makes the SD980is “unacceptable”.