Canon Digital Ixus 970 IS compact camera

Could be your dad's camera

If your idea of manual mode is being able to select a number of ISO settings, exposure compensation and white balance presets that’s fine, but we think Canon is being a little, shall we say, imaginative with its choice of terminology.

Canon has moved the power button from the top and placed it at the back

The menu system is a little fiddly and doesn’t give you much time to make up your mind, so you often find yourself re-pressing buttons to return to the menu screen. The selection ring worked but it’s not the most ergonomic system we’ve used. However, the Ixus 970 warms up fast and there’s minimal shutter lag.

In continuous shooting mode, it takes around 1.5 seconds to fire off a shot, but this almost doubles if you use the flash. As expected, the extra long zoom is one of the camera’s highlights, but as we said earlier, not so great if you’re trying to squeeze in a wide angle shot.

Sample shots
Click for full-size images

The Ixus 970 IS was good at reproducing subtleties in light and shade, as this picture illustrates

At ISO 1600 you can clearly see the noise on this toy dinosaur