Mini Digital Camera
Canon PowerShot SD990 IS

The Canon PowerShot SD990 IS is one of the best mini digital cameras in terms of operations and capability.

It may not be the smallest or the most stylish among mini digital cameras, but it is still relatively portable at merely 200 grams. It is bulky if you’re thinking of simply carrying it about in your pocket, but this additional bulkiness is a worthwhile exchange for it image quality and price.

The SD990 IS best feature is its full manual operations mode. Most photography lovers will agree that having manual operations is one of the distinctive features that set one camera ahead from its competition. Manual controls like independent aperture and shutter priority controls allows the user to have full creative control over how the photos will turn out. Flash levels and focus depth can be adjusted and this allows the user to choose what he wants to focus on, rather than in an automatic operation which dictates what object gets more exposure and what gets clarity. Sometimes, we just like to take things that are out of place, but automatic operations tries it best not to let us.

This manual operation might appear too much to handle for new camera owners, but for users who know exactly what they are doing, the SD990 IS is one of the best choices of mini digital cameras they can have. Even for users who don’t know what they are doing, the fact that it is a digital camera means you can try all sorts of options and features with the manual operation just to see how they turn out. Over time, you will gain more experience and you can begin to try out fancy photos using the features like an expert. In fact, you can use an automatic mode camera for 10 years, and probably know less about taking a picture than someone whose been fiddling around with manual operation mode for 3 months.

The Canon SD990 IS also comes with an advanced image processor that gives it high quality image quality can most mini digital cameras cannot match. In fact, most users rate it as the step before advancing to a DSLR, but except it’s much smaller and lighter than one.

It has a small LCD screen at only 2.5 inches despite its size, but a smaller LCD screen helps it to save power and therefore giving it longer battery life. There’s also an optical viewfinder, a feature which many mini digital camera no longer has. If you really have to save on your battery, you can turn off the LCD finder and use the optical viewfinder for taking photographs. However, the optical viewfinder is not very accurate, and most users find it not useful at all. It is better to stick with the LCD screen for taking your shots.

The SD990 IS can be limiting because of its relatively short optical zoom at only 3.7X. Usually it’s preferably for optical zoom to be 4X or more because unless you’re looking to take photos at a comfortable range all the time. In the video mode, optical zoom is also disabled, therefore giving you only digital zoom in videos. Another limitation with the SD990 IS is the high noise level in the image when using higher ISO settings. This presents a potential difficulty for using the camera in low light situations.

The Canon PowerShot SD990 IS has also been reported to have start up problems where the camera prompts you to recharge the battery. This requires the camera to be replaced since repair doesn’t seem to be able to solve the problem. Many users have faced a problem of a similar nature, but at the same time, most users seem to never experience this at all.

With full manual operations capability, lightning fast operation, and high image quality the Canon PowerShot SD990 IS is one of the most popular mini digital cameras. It remains small, although relatively bulkier than most mini cameras. The camera does have some limitations with optical zoom and noise level, but other than that, it is as powerful as a mini digital camera would get.