Canon PowerShot SD980 - Good Compact Camera

by Allen
(US)

I bought the Canon PowerShot SD980 digital camera for my wife since she wanted a small pocket camera which she could carry around all day. Since all my compact cameras are Canons and I'm very satisfied with them I chose the Powershot SD980 for her since it gives her the larger zoom range she needs for an all-in-one camera.

Like all the other Canon Compacts I've used, the menu system is clean, simple, and easy to navigate, all the important buttons & dials are easy to find. It has a big bright screen, but there's one issue with it for me but not for my wife.

The screen is a 16:9 aspect ratio display, when taking photos at the regular 4:3 ratio it doesn't use the entire screen and leaves black bars on the sides, I like to have the pictures fill the entire screen but my wife doesn't mind the empty space.

Picture quality is typical Canon, which is to say great colours once the settings are dialed in a bit. The automatic settings on the Canon PowerShot SD980 are great for people pictures and skintone but I like to dial in more saturation and darken things a bit for richer colours.

You won't be making large exhibition prints with this or any other compact camera, but it's more than good enough for pictures sized 8x10.