I need your help to take a decision.
Until now my wife was using an Ixus 40. For Christmas she would like
a new camera. Due to the fact that she was enjoying the Ixus Range
she would like again an Ixus.
What do you recommend between the Ixus 870 and the Ixus 980 ?
Which model do you have and can you recommend it ?
Thanks for your help .....
Xenakis,
Let me see if I can be of help to you. You're wanting to stay with the Ixus family of ultra-compacts. So the earlier remarks about the G10 are not really appropriate to your needs. I have the SD880 (Ixus 870). It has some very strong advantages over earlier models, especially including high resolution 3 inch LCD, very small size, larger buttons that are easy to press and have a nice click feel, Digic 4, and of course the wide angle lens. It is also improved in another way, with changes to the flash design to essentially eliminate the dust orbs found in indoor flash photography in the earlier Canon SD models (like the SD870). That does work very well, and I haven't seen dust orbs in my photos to date, except one. The Digic 4 enables tracking of moving subject just prior to taking the photo, when they are moving to or away from the camera, to insure focus, and of course face detection, and red-eye removal.
The SD990 (Ixus 980) has the larger image sensor and some manual controls. This camera should deliver slightly higher quality images than the SD880, except that it has a high image pixel density also, because Canon chose to include a higher resolution sensor. (More Megapixels) So, it remains to be seen if there is really much greater image quality. (Lower noise at higher ISO settings, say above 400, for low-light shooting situations, which happen a lot indoors, without flash) The SD 990 (Ixus 980) has a 36 mm wide angle view, instead of 28 mm for the SD880.
To me, for capturing images of family and so forth up close, the wide angle zoom is very useful. It's especially great in group photos where space is a limitation. You can get everybody into the picture with ease, most of the time. Other useful purposes are architectural shooting of high rise buildings in downtown settings, where you can't back up anymore to get the buildings included. Wide angle becomes highly appreciated when you've got it. You can always crop to get a narrower view, but there is no other way to get the wide angle, except to have it built into the camera design. (Or add-on lenses for larger cameras)
In my experience, the SD880 (Ixus 870) takes stunning pictures in sharp focus, with very natural colors, with virtually no effort, thanks to Digic 4 and other design featurers in the camera. I think your wife would be well pleased. The small size is definitely appreciated by anyone. There are enough megapixels that you can still crop images that will print or view nicely when you want to do that. I am well pleased with mine. I have had it since October when they first came out in the US. Also, last week I did some video clips with mine for the first time. They came out great, in low light of a concert of cello and piano in low light. 10 minute clips take up a little under 900 Megabytes. An 8 GB flash memory card can record around 90 minutes of video. So that's quite a bit. I prefer the faster older SD format cards of 150x speed for rapid download of pictures and video recordings to the PC. (My preference is Transcend, and they make the SD cards in 2 and 4 GB capacities. Since I don't do a lot of video recording these are better for my needs. If you wanted to do longer videos, you would need the 8 GB SDHC cards in Class 6, which are very cheap, but slower downloads onto the PC)
Hope I've helped.
Glenn
--
Alexander...our wild child
Canon S2, A610, SD880
