The Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS (also known as the PowerShot SD990 IS Digital ELPH in North America) is the first-ever Digital IXUS / ELPH camera to offer a true manual mode, instantly appealing to all those DSLR owners looking for a pocketable second camera. Other highlights include a 14.7 megapixel sensor, a stabilised, 36-133mm equivalent, 3.7x optical zoom lens, a 2.5-inch, 230,000-dot LCD, a zoom-coupled optical viewfinder, a QuickShot mode, a live histogram, Servo AF, i-Contrast, Face Detection and a Face Self-Timer function. The Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS is available in silver, black and, in some markets, red as well, for a recommended price of £349.99 / $399.99 / €459.99. Zoltan Arva-Toth discovers if the range-topping Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS is the best-ever IXUS / ELPH.

The menu system is logical and fairly straightforward. Once you get used to the way Canon menus work then you can use any Canon camera. The camera lets you choose the image size (14.7m, 9m, 5m, 2m, VGA, Widescreen 4416 x 2480), aspect ratio (4:3, or Widescreen), and how much compression is applied to the images (Superfine, Fine, Normal). Higher quality images take a large amount of memory, so a high capacity memory card is definitely recommended, unless you’re prepared to sacrifice image size or compression to fit more pictures in memory. Battery life is rated at approx. 280 shots according to CIPA standards. I was able to take over 320 shots before the battery went flat. Battery life will be dependent on the kind of use you make of the camera. A large memory card is relatively cheap, and highly recommended, I would recommend at a bare minimum a 2gb memory card, if you intend to take fine JPEG images, and preferably a 4gb memory card, or larger.

One thing that hasn’t changed from the 960 IS is the stabilised, 36-133mm equivalent, 3.7x zoom lens that sits fully retracted into the body when the camera is switched off, but extends very rapidly upon power up. The maximum aperture is a fast f/2.8 at the wide end but a slow f/5.8 at the other extreme of the zoom range. In Manual mode – which of course was missing from the 960 IS – you have a choice of using the lens at full aperture or dialing in an f-stop that’s approximately 3 stops slower. You don’t get anything in between the two values, and the reason, I believe, is that there is probably no iris diaphragm built into the lens. So whenever choosing the ‘smaller aperture’, what you do is simply engage a built-in neutral density filter. To test my theory, I took two shots at the telephoto end, one at the maximum aperture of f/5.8, and another one at the other selectable f-stop of f/16. The depth of field in the two photographs turned out to be identical, suggesting that stopping down did not affect the physical size of the aperture. Using an internal ND filter instead of a diaphragm actually makes some sense in a camera that has a small sensor – diffraction would eat away at details if you used ‘real’ f/16 anyway. The downside is that it limits manual control over exposure – fortunately, you still have two other variables (shutter speed and sensitivity) to play with.