Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS Reviews: Digital Compact Camera

  • Photo of Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS Digital Camera
  • Photo of Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS Digital Camera
  • Photo of Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS Digital Camera
Photo of Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS Digital Camera
Score: 9.1/10

59 Real Customer Reviews - In Summary

+ This digital camera scores high on build quality. - It has no outstanding negative points. “Excellent image quality. excellent build quality. compact and comfortable to…” Tony, Walton on Thames View all 59 real customer reviews

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Product Details

2.5" Screen, 3.7x optical zoom, SD Card storage More »

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Real customer reviews

59 verified purchasers have reviewed this product.
95% of people recommend it.

Show scores of…
All purchasers (59)
Build Quality9.4
Ease of use8.7
Features9.1
Image quality9.3
Value for money (at time of purchase)8.9
Overall rating9.1
Keen amateur (12)
Experienced amateur (8)
Point & shoot (8)
Other (31)
 

*not all purchasers provided a score or review

Score 9.0/10

Tony, Walton on Thames

+ Excellent image quality. Excellent build quality. Compact and comfortable to hold. Controls are intuitive and considering the range of features are the best I have experienced. Face recognition is effective and very useful

- Slow response at lower ambient light levels, has caused me to miss shots. A custom leather case would be a much better option than the cloth fabric case offered.

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20 of 21 people found this review helpful

purchased 08 Dec 2008

Score 9.0/10

Anonymous verified purchaser

+ Small, light and pocket size. Good quality photos can be achieved. It is great as a point and shoot but also has manual settings for more advanced use.

- The manual is on a CD but it would be better to have a manual in paper form included to check operation points while out and about.

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12 of 13 people found this review helpful

purchased 12 Jan 2009

Score 9.0/10

david, ellesmere,shropshire

+ build,battery life,image quality

- little fiddly to change settings,

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11 of 12 people found this review helpful

purchased 31 Oct 2008

Score 9.0/10

Anonymous verified purchaser

+ solid and robust. brilliant quality photos, very quick off to ready time.

- does not come with a cover or protective bag

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9 of 10 people found this review helpful

purchased 18 Oct 2008

Score 10.0/10

john , glasgow , “have used cameras longtime”

+ small good to put in pocket

- none

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6 of 7 people found this review helpful

purchased 01 Jan 2009

Score 9.0/10

Kevin, Wimborne Dorset , “Pro Photographer in Dorset ”

+ Handy size that packs in a good file size, easy to slip int your pocket.

- Reviewer left no comment

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4 of 5 people found this review helpful

purchased 19 Jan 2009

Score 9.0/10

Keith, Cambridgeshire

+ Packed with useful features: Spend a little time learning how to navigate and most become easy to use and rewarding. Of course you can snap away happily without ever troubling to explore its versatility, and you will get very good results. But this is not a cheap snapshot camera- it's much more than that. I think you should be able to control depth of field, although I have yet to experiment with that. The main 'extra' feature I needed was a viewfinder after trying to use my wife's Exilim in bright sunlight- the display was just not visible. This Ixus 980 IS has a much better display, and so far I have hardly used the viewfinder- but I feel it will be a sad day when nobody includes this feature somewhere in their range. The viewfinder keeps up with the optical zoom but see bad points... In the 'Bad Points' I have criticised one aspect of the video feature. Apart from that it makes quite a decent steady and easy to watch movie, with sound. Although I have picked fault with some aspects of the IXUS 980 IS, overall I am extremely pleased with it, enjoy using it and am very pleased with the resulting photographs. Compact and not too heavy. It is not as versatile as a DSLR- you could hardly expect it to be- but its size and weight mean you are a hundred times more likely to have it with you when an unexpected opportunity crops up. And it will almost certainly reward you with a very good result. I take it almost everywhere- it's not much bigger or heavier than a mobile phone.
Overall I am extremely pleased with this little gem, and feel it was well worth the effort of researching the market. And worth the effort of reading the 170 page user guide. If you want a lot more than a snap-shot camera, download the Ixus 980 IS full specification and get ready for some real enjoyment!

- Appearance is not to my liking but my appreciation of design is a bit sixties, so younger users will probably be happy with it. In any case it is such a good camera I would still enjoy using it if it looked like a used tea bag. That 'oh so necessary' viewfinder image is a bit like looking into the wrong end of a telescope- it is the least well thought out feature but it does work and I am pleased it is there. Other 'Bad Points': The top ON/OFF button is difficult to press, being small & flush. You can switch on using the easier 'playback' button. This immediately shows your last photo and you can easily scroll back, but pressing the shutter button half way brings the lens out and you can shoot as usual. But you still have to switch off with the awkward ON/OFF button. The video function is quite good but... I have not found a way of keeping the focus in operation, so it starts off sharp then loses focus if the subject moves in or out. If video is important to you, there is another Ixus model (cheaper) which has HD. It might manage auto focus, but I have not checked. The User Guide is a reduced photocopy effort- not up to the standard of the rest of the product. But it is readable and fairly thorough.

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2 of 2 people found this review helpful

purchased 05 Jul 2009

Score 10.0/10

Chris , St Ives- Cambridgeshire , “Experienced amateur” More like this »

+ There are numerous good points. The camera is feature packed and spec'd to a level which you'd expect to find in a DSLR. The pre-programmable print button is great feature for assigning various options (I've assigned mine for one touch manual white balance control- great for vivid underwater shots [although the scene underwater mode is also excellent]). The battery life is great, build quality superb and image quality fantastic. Having just returned from a diving trip to Scapa Flow (Orkney's) I now have a SDHC card with over 300 high res images both on land and underwater. It'll be a struggle to decide which ones to print, as there are many gems! These cameras are a must for any diver wanting to purchase a camera with manual white balance control, without running to the expense of a DSLR. The camera is a doddle to operate and the supplied software allows for a good degree of post image editing.....not that you should really need to with this camera in your pocket! For those wishing for a similar spec but with a large zoom I'd suggest the G10, which has the same number of features but comes with a larger zoom lens.

- Due to its compact architecture, the flash is a little close to the lens. Consequently when used with an underwater housing a shadow effect occure owards the lower right hand side of the image. This can be eliminated with the use of a separate underwater strobe, a worthwile investment for any keen underwater photographer. The digital zoom isn't worth using unless you have a very steady hand or tripod, as the noise created even in lower res shots can dramatically reduce the quality of the image. VGA movie recording rather than high definition has its drawbacks (although the camera was launched in October 2008, and technology has moved on. HD isn't the be-all and end-all in fact I've heard that people need to reduce the number of frames per second in order to playback many HD movies shot on cameras as their frame rate exceeds current DVD playback speeds.)

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2 of 2 people found this review helpful

purchased 12 Jul 2009

Score 9.0/10

David, London , “Keen amateur” More like this »

+ Excellent image quality, even in low light conditions. The 'auto' setting is adequate for pretty well any conditions or situations that I have so-far encountered. It's very useful to have a viewfinder, an item that is beginning to disappear from digital cameras. The movie-clip quality is very high, including the sound. In an editing suite it's almost impossible to distinguish between the video from the IXUS and the video from my Sony Handycam. The camera is very small and light and an underwater housing is available for scuba.

- It's quite difficult to get perfect focus when using the 'macro' setting to photograph very small objects. It seems to work best if you position the red dot from the camera's led beam slightly in front of what you want to photograph. Once you get the autofocus right though the image quality is excellent. It's sometimes difficult to know whether you have successfully switched off the flash, as both 'on' and 'off' symbols are very similar and very small. The combination of zoom and macro seems to throw the autofocus out slightly. It's better to move the camera closer to the subject.

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2 of 3 people found this review helpful

purchased 13 Jun 2009

Score 9.0/10

clinton, swansea

+ great auto feature where you can point n take resolution makes even paper prints are excellent quality

- none i can see

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1 of 1 people found this review helpful

purchased 30 Jan 2009

Score 7.0/10

Anonymous verified purchaser

+ Hi res, nice handling

- Over complex, non intuitive menus, diddly and poor quality photocopied instructions obviosly a grey import - not made clear on Simply's website

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1 of 1 people found this review helpful

purchased 24 Jun 2009

Score 9.0/10

Peter , Isle of Man , “Point & shoot” More like this »

+ Very neat and compact mid-price camera with a good feel in the hand. Small enough to carry around easily. Gd LCD quality. Still v new so haven't had a chance to explore all the features.

- Reviewer left no comment

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3 of 5 people found this review helpful

purchased 23 Apr 2009

Score 9.0/10

Bryan, East Yorkshire

+ manual white balance

- Not found one yet

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purchased 26 Jun 2009

Score 10.0/10

Anonymous verified purchaser , “Keen amateur” More like this »

+ all what i need fron a point and shoot

- feels like a toy?

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purchased 06 Jul 2009

Score 9.0/10

Anonymous verified purchaser , “Experienced amateur” More like this »

+ I was able to try out all the functions and get to grips with most in one Sunday afternoon. The controls and displays were easy to use and the manual surprisingly easy to follow.
When using the underwater housing it was easy to use all the buttons, to change settings/functions when wearing 3mm diving gloves, more difficult with thicker gloves.
The macro was brilliant, very easy to check live focus, it will be great for small criters like the Pigmy sea horses and nudibranch.

- I had read the Canon website about the produst and expected to be able to choose/define a white balance setting when using the Underwater mode, this is not an available option. However the Underwater setting does seem to compensate to a limited degree for white balance problems.
If using the flask and the underwater housing a shadow is produced by the lens extension 'tube'.. I will need to buy an external strobe.

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purchased 28 Jun 2009

Score 9.0/10

Marion , East Grinstead

+ Light, small and should be easy to use once mastered.

- A bit fiddly to manipulate probably because of its size.
Comes with a cd manual - would have prefered a book.

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purchased 29 Jun 2009

Score 10.0/10

Alan, Cambridgeshire , “Keen amateur” More like this »

+ Excellent product. Although I have larked 'Ease of Use' down, the only reaon for this is that as it has leading features in 'manual' mode that require learning, it would naturally not be as simple to use in this mode as other 'just Auto' camers. That said, in manual mode, it's excellent.

- Would have been nice to bundle with a case.

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purchased 09 Jul 2009

Score 10.0/10

Lilian , Stevenage, Herts

+ It had so many good points it is difficult to pick out just one or two. I certainly found many things that I didn't have on my other Digital Camera which gave me a much wider menu to pick from, also the number of Pixels which I can now control and use less if I want to. .

- I did find it a little difficulty with the Zoom button placement as it tended to take a little time for me to control it at the Zoom distance I wanted. Perhaps it was just me as I was so used to to my other digital being very precise and better placed on the back away from the shooting position button.

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purchased 17 Jul 2009

Score 10.0/10

IAN, HARTLEPOOL , “Point & shoot” More like this »

+ ALL IN ALL A VERY GOOD POINT AND SHOOT CAMERA BUT WITH ALL THE FEATURES OF A 35mm CAMERA YOU CAN DO JUST ABOUT ANYTHING WITH ALL OF THE SETTINGS

- NO BAD POINTS

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purchased 18 Jul 2009

Score 9.0/10

shan_c1978, Norfolk

+ If you've owned an Ixus previously then this will be very familiar to you as it has a lot of the same features. The image quality is superb being nearly 15mp. You can clearly see the detail of objects in the background without even having to zoom in. I particularly like this camera compared to my old Ixus 55 because you start off with a wider image meaning you dont have to stand miles back if you want to take in the view. The manual settings are also a plus if the auto settings arent doing what you'd like.
The camera is a little chunkier than the Ixus 55 but you hardly notice it due to the overall quality of the product. Definitely well worth buying this camera. I spent ages researching this item and found it to be a lot cheaper on this website.

- The round switch tends to flick to other settings easily so you have to double check before taking a photo.

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purchased 25 Jul 2009

Score 10.0/10

Lyndon, Birmingham

+ Image quility, especially in low light. Optical viewfinder. Manual settings

- None.

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purchased 29 Jul 2009

Score 7.0/10

Anonymous verified purchaser

+ small neat simple to use and fits in my pocket.

- may be a little heavy

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purchased 31 Jul 2009

Score 9.0/10

John, London , “Experienced amateur” More like this »

+ Viewfinder, and predictive focussing.

- Reviewer left no comment

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purchased 26 Jul 2009

Score 10.0/10

Steve , Pershore , “Point & shoot” More like this »

+ Amazing camera. So easy to use and great pictures.

- None

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purchased 31 Jul 2009

Score 10.0/10

Brian, Cramlington , “Experienced amateur” More like this »

+ Image Quality above all, great build quality, excellent features

- for a pocket camera - none

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purchased 05 Aug 2009

Score 9.0/10

Anonymous verified purchaser , “Keen amateur” More like this »

+ This camera has lots of features, we particularly like the colour accent setting. The picture quality is very good and easy to take good pictures.

- The dials are a but fidly and the menus take a bit of working out, if you've had a canon before it only takes 10 minutes with the manual and you can see where all the more advanced settings are.

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purchased 06 Aug 2009

Score 10.0/10

Andy, Suffolk , “Point & shoot” More like this »

+ Very high build quality, easy to use, great camera for the price.

- Instructions came on a CD, but photocopy booklet was included. No case.

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purchased 20 Aug 2009

Score 8.0/10

Anonymous verified purchaser , “Experienced amateur” More like this »

+ Size. Manual controls

- Image noise

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purchased 16 Sep 2009

Score 10.0/10

kay, dartford , “Keen amateur” More like this »

+ Great compact camera that has it all!

- Need to read up on how to use the many many options.

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purchased 18 Sep 2009

Score 9.0/10

Doreen, Madeley Crewe , “Point & shoot” More like this »

+ I have just downloaded the first images off it. I have to say they are excellent.I have found it easy to use.But so far have only used the automatic function.

- Their is a slight lag between pressing the button & the shutter firing.

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purchased 06 Jul 2009

Score 8.0/10

Ken, County Durham , “Keen amateur” More like this »

+ Image quality. Loads of features.

- User guide is only on CD.- no hard copy supplied or available from Canon. It will take you a while to learn all that this camera can do.

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purchased 27 Jul 2009

Score 8.0/10

Martin, Winchester

+ Very small and light. Sharp lens and high pixel count are adequate for selective enlargements. A4 prints are sharp edge to edge, A3 prints are pixel free. Manual (etc) options make it very flexible for creative shots. Feels well made. Surprisingly good flash coverage. Joy of joys, it has a viewfinder.

- Pictures display vingetting (dark corners). Delayed reaction when pressing the shutter - even if pre-focussed. PIctures seem to lack sparkle and most are improved by 'auto correction' on a PC. Digital zoom (only) on video gives unacceptable results. The viewfinder is not very clear and does not show the whole of the image. Menu navigation is not intuitive (to me). Lens cover 'leaves' do not close flat every time.

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purchased 15 Aug 2009

Score 3.0/10

Linden, Dublin

+ Build quality

- For a high end compact camera from Canon it is very disappointing. Far too slow to focus/take and process the image. The moment is missed most times. Image is not very sharp considering this is a 15 mp camera. I don't think it is any better than a cheap Casio or Samsung, certainly much inferior to the Panasonic Lumix which is less expensive. I will not be keeping this - a waste of money. I already have a Canon digital SLR and was expecting almost as good quality

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0 of 4 people found this review helpful

purchased 14 Apr 2009

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Expert reviews for Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS

PC Advisor expert review - by Andrew Harrison

The Canon IXUS 980 IS is a 14.7Mp compact camera.

This Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS review continued on PC Advisor

reviewed 29 Sep 2009

PC Advisor expert review - by Danny Palmerlee

As a fan of Canon's Digital Elph cameras, we were a bit disappointed by the current flagship model of the series, the 14.7Mp Canon PowerShot SD990 IS.

This Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS review continued on PC Advisor

reviewed 10 Aug 2009

Product Features

Camera Type Compact
resolution (Megapixel) 14.7
Optical Zoom Ratio 3.7
Screen Size in Inches 2.5
Digital Zoom Ratio 4
Face Recognition Yes
Image Stabilisation Yes
Colour Multi
Memory Card Slot Yes
Media Format SDHC Card
Media Format SD Card
Media Format MMC Card
PictBridge Yes
Macro Mode Yes
Video Recorder Yes
Manual Focus Yes
Timer Yes
Under Water No
Dimensions (mm) 62.2x96.7x27.9
Weight (g) 160
Flash Yes
Resolution (Pixels) 4416 x 3312
Shortest Shutter Speed 1600
Longest Shutter Speed 15"
Max. Aperture Lens 1 f2.8-5.8
USB Port Yes

Also known as: Canon IXUS 980 IS, Digital Ixus 980IS, Digital Ixus 980 IS

Digital Cameras Buyers' Guide  

Manufacturer's Description

The 14.7 MP Digital IXUS 980 IS blends technical excellence with a unique, stylish black or silver design. Powered by Canon’s latest DIGIC 4 processor, it combines advanced auto features with Manual control.

Features

* 14.7 MP Digital IXUS in black or silver * 3.7x optical zoom, optical IS * Manual Control and 20 other modes * DIGIC 4 * Face Detection Technology * Anti-blur Motion Detection Technology * i-Contrast * 2.5” PureColor LCD II plus OVF * Multi Control Dial, My Menu * VGA movies

Exquisite Style. Exceptional Performance.

14.7 Megapixels
With an incredible 14.7 Megapixel sensor for stunning high-resolution shots, the Digital IXUS 980 IS provides abundant detail for huge prints and creative image manipulation.

High Style
The Digital IXUS 980 IS offers exquisite styling and a premium build quality, finished in a choice of two colours: black or silver.

Advanced optics
A high quality lens with 3.7x zoom ensures versatility and superb results when shooting both stills and movies. Canon’s renowned optical Image Stabilizer technology counteracts camera shake for outstanding image quality.

Take control
The first Digital IXUS with Manual Control, the Digital IXUS 980 IS allows shooting in more demanding conditions, or creative experimentation. A further 20 automatic modes include QuickShot, for extra-responsive shooting of fast moving objects or fleeting events.

DIGIC 4
Incorporating the latest in image processing technology, DIGIC 4 delivers extraordinary noise reduction. The result is richly detailed, clean images, even when shooting at high ISO speeds. DIGIC 4 also drives exceptional processing speeds and responsive operation.

Face Detection Technology
Great people shots are assured with the latest Face Detection AF/AE/FE/WB, even for faces on angles and far away. Face Select & Track optimises settings for a chosen person, while FaceSelf-Timer waits for you to enter the frame for great group shots. Auto Red-Eye Correction eliminates red eyes during shooting and playback.

Abolish blur
The Digital IXUS 980 IS combats blur with High ISO Auto and Motion Detection Technology, which ascertains movement of both camera and subject to set the optimum ISO. Servo AF tracks moving subjects to ensure they remain in focus.

Optimum contrast
i-Contrast boosts brightness in dark areas of an image. The result is improved contrast with retained detail in tricky lighting conditions.

Large LCD
The 2.5" PureColor LCD II offers exceptional contrast and colour rendition, plus a wide viewing angle for easier framing, playback and menu navigation – even at angles and in bright sunlight. An optical viewfinder offers choice when framing shots.

Easy access
The Multi Control Dial provides fast, convenient and accurate access to menu items, functions and images during playback. Customise the menu system with My Menu for rapid access to the functions you use most.

Movies
Shoot spontaneous, high-quality 30fps VGA movies with sound.

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