Sunday, January 11, 2009
Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS 14MP Camera Unboxing Review
IXUS used to mean stylish, silvery, skinny camera from Canon, well I guess with the advent of the Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS it’s time to drop the “silvery” part. The flagship model of the IXUS line features many IXUS’s first: never-seen-before Black body design, manual exposure settings and a 14.7 MP sensor (!!). Are they useful? Let’s find out now.
The package includes the camera, a battery pack, a battery charger, a data cable, an AV cable, a strap, a CD-Rom and a user’s guide. There is no camera case included.
Being part of the IXUS family, the Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS refuses to be another brick. The curved design and the gold/black color schemes fit nicely together.
The “cyber green” on/off button looks surprisingly well on the black surface
Turn the dial to change between different camera modes and movie mode. Although Canon promises full manual control, it doesn’t mean you get the same aperture-priority and shutter-priority mode in the Canon A-series camera. I have a hard time understanding why a “for-style” camera cannot have the proper exposure controls.
The wheel also serves as a 4-way D-pad. You can change the ISO settings, flash, focus mode and drive modes with the D-pad. The wheel provides an intuitive way of changing various settings without the need to look at the screen.
The 3.7X zoom lens has an effective focal length of 36-133 mm. At the tele-end of the lens, the aperture is just f/5.8, luckily the camera has optical image stabilisation to minimize the blurring effects
As you can see, the Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS is not the slimmest IXUS camera ever made. The curves do a nice job in “mitigating” the effect of the thickness, so that the camera still looks very nice despite its thickness.
The battery is locked securely by a locking mechanism. The camera supports MMC, SD and SDHC cards (none included).
Unsurprisingly, the camera possesses face detection focusing, AF-Point zoom and Servo AF (continuous auto-focus). The screen is a relatively modest 2.5” screen (230,000 pixels), which is barely enough for the 14.7MP pictures!
You can customize the button to the top left of the wheel to 1 of the 12 possible functions. I think the “Display Off” and WB functions are urgently in need of a separate button, of course you are entitled to think otherwise.
The Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS excels in pixel count and body design. The manual exposure mode is a nice addition, but the lack of aperture/shutter priority modes leave us something to be desired. The zoom range is a meager 3.7X zoom, which is hardly a perfect match for the powerful 14.7MP sensor.
The package includes the camera, a battery pack, a battery charger, a data cable, an AV cable, a strap, a CD-Rom and a user’s guide. There is no camera case included.
Being part of the IXUS family, the Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS refuses to be another brick. The curved design and the gold/black color schemes fit nicely together.
The “cyber green” on/off button looks surprisingly well on the black surface
Turn the dial to change between different camera modes and movie mode. Although Canon promises full manual control, it doesn’t mean you get the same aperture-priority and shutter-priority mode in the Canon A-series camera. I have a hard time understanding why a “for-style” camera cannot have the proper exposure controls.
The wheel also serves as a 4-way D-pad. You can change the ISO settings, flash, focus mode and drive modes with the D-pad. The wheel provides an intuitive way of changing various settings without the need to look at the screen.
The 3.7X zoom lens has an effective focal length of 36-133 mm. At the tele-end of the lens, the aperture is just f/5.8, luckily the camera has optical image stabilisation to minimize the blurring effects
As you can see, the Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS is not the slimmest IXUS camera ever made. The curves do a nice job in “mitigating” the effect of the thickness, so that the camera still looks very nice despite its thickness.
The battery is locked securely by a locking mechanism. The camera supports MMC, SD and SDHC cards (none included).
Unsurprisingly, the camera possesses face detection focusing, AF-Point zoom and Servo AF (continuous auto-focus). The screen is a relatively modest 2.5” screen (230,000 pixels), which is barely enough for the 14.7MP pictures!
You can customize the button to the top left of the wheel to 1 of the 12 possible functions. I think the “Display Off” and WB functions are urgently in need of a separate button, of course you are entitled to think otherwise.
The Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS excels in pixel count and body design. The manual exposure mode is a nice addition, but the lack of aperture/shutter priority modes leave us something to be desired. The zoom range is a meager 3.7X zoom, which is hardly a perfect match for the powerful 14.7MP sensor.
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