wealth of features at a bargain price

I own several cameras (digital and film) and this is by far the most fun of all to use. The reason is quite simple; it's a small camera that is easy to use, and takes great pictures. It allows me to concentrate on taking pictures instead of worrying about the camera. I can take this camera anywhere because of its size and it gives me very satisfying pictures.


BUILD QUALITY

The camera body is attractive (in my eyes at least), all plastic in duo tone gunmetal grey. Build quality is quite solid for a camera in this price range. It feels more expensive. The battery door on the bottom is solid and locks into place tightly. Some people might not like that both the batteries and the SD card are found in the same place, but I don't mind at all. The weight is about 200 grams with batteries, and while it's not ultra compact or extremely lightweight, it can fit into the pockets of cargo pants or jackets.


HANDLING

It fits comfortably in my hands with its enlarged grip. I find that the grip allows one to take pictures with one hand quite easily. The A590 has a zoom lever surrounding the shutter button which I like, rather than cameras which have buttons for zooming. I find this more intuitive. The mode dial is very useful and it's great to have it situated at the top where it's easy to select. The other buttons to access menus and functions, toggle exposure, display (on/off), and display/shooting switch, are found at the back of the camera. I had no problems with the layout of the buttons. To me, it's the most intuitive cameras I've ever handled.


BATTERIES

The camera uses two common AA batteries which helps when one is traveling and can buy replacement batteries anywhere. I personally use the rechargeable Rayovac Hybrid 2100 mAh NiMH batteries which one can buy at Walmart. I found the alkaline batteries unsuitable for digital cameras such as this one because they drain very quickly in use. I only got under 120 shots with the alkalines that came with the camera, but have gotten just over 400 shots with NiMH batteries. These include using some flash, having display on at most times, and doing extensive reviewing of the pictures. I also shot a few videos. This camera can easily last me a day of shooting with a pair of batteries, but I often carry an extra pair just in case.


SHOOTING MODES

I like the manual shooting modes. As an experienced photographer, I would not buy a camera without full manual, shutter (Tv) and aperture priority (Av) modes. A camera doesn’t feel complete without it. I often shoot in Av mode, and like to adjust the exposure compensation. I was happy to find a dedicated button for exposure compensation at the back of the camera. There is also a handy shortcut button which I assign to evaluate white balance. One press of the button gives me the correct white balance for a scene. Awesome! I often just point the camera at a white object in the scene and take the evaluative white balance. It works better than the auto white balance most of the time.

There are also many other different shooting modes, but I don't use them. These include the scene modes for night, fireworks, portrait, landscape, beach, aquarium, and several others. For beginners or those who don't like to fiddle with camera settings, these programmed scene modes are especially useful. I've tested a few of them, like the fireworks and portrait modes and they exposed the pictures nicely.

FLASH

I like the flash exposure control. I can manually adjust the amount of flash output that I need from minimum to maximum output. Using maximum takes the camera a few extra seconds to recover, during which time the LCD is not functional. This only happens during the later stages when the batteries are running low. The built-in flash has average output for this camera class, and is only effective within eight feet. It does a decent job for portraits of a few friends at close range, but I don't think it would work well for a large group photo session. If one needs more flash power, consider getting the Canon HF-DC1 flash unit, which fits onto the side of the A590IS using an included mounting bracket.

There's also auto flash which lets the camera predict the amount of flash required. I think it works well enough, and most of the pictures have turned out bright and evenly lit.


IMAGE QUALITY

The image quality of the A590IS is really good for a bargain priced camera. The colors are vibrant and pleasing to look at. It helps if one uses the correct white balance settings. I like the evaluative white balance which I set by pointing the camera to a white card, or an object that is white, and it gives me a good reading. One can adjust saturation, contrast, and sharpness in the custom color menu. I find the images are great out of the camera without any adjustments. The lens is sharp at the center, but there is some softness near the edges. Noticeable barrel distortion is found at the wide end of the zoom and very insignificant pincushion distortion at the telephoto end. The zoom length of 35-140mm, or 4X zoom, is suitable for my needs. A wide angle 28mm would have been nice though.

Noise is well controlled. I can confidently shoot at ISO 400 and not worry about image degradation from graininess. Up to 200, the images are smooth and have very little noise. At 400 there is slight noise, but it's very insignificant. Pixel peepers might rant and rave though. There’s a big jump at 800 where there is noticeable noise and detail loss. I would still use 800 if I have to, and the noise level is tolerable. At ISO 1600, it's very grainy and I would use it if I must, although I prefer the image quality at 800. While noise is an issue at 800 and above, I find it useful to have this flexibility to shoot in low lighting without flash. With image stabilization, I can shoot at 800, using a shutter speed slower than 1/15th of a second and still get a sharp image.


SHOOTING

Shooting speed is excellent. It takes under 2 seconds from start-up to the time it takes to capture an image. Shutter lag is very minimal and in many situations one wouldn't notice it. The auto focus is quick and accurate, and I’m very pleased with by its performance. The camera doesn’t hunt for long even in low lighting which is remarkable. A helpful tip for not getting blown highlights (areas in pictures that are overly bright) is to have -1/3 exposure compensation. I find this works especially well for outdoors. I rather have a slightly underexposed shot which I can fix using levels in Photoshop, then get an overexposed picture which is difficult to fix.

The A590 comes with an image stabilizer (IS) in the lens. This helps to reduce blur in pictures. From my experience I find that it indeed works, and works quite well. When I have the IS off, I noticed pictures are softer around the edges. Zooming in shows that the images are slightly blurry. With IS on, the images are sharper which is noticeable when zoomed in. If one is careful and have stable hands, one can even take pictures as slow as 1/6th of a second and get sharp images. Beyond that I had difficulty getting many pictures to remain sharp even with IS. The IS also helps keep the image in the LCD screen from shaking, and this is very noticeable when IS is off versus on. Therefore, I have kept the IS function turned on in the "continuous" mode at all times, even though it utilizes some battery power.


SOFTWARE

The A590 comes bundled with Canon's ZoomBrowser EX and PhotoStich. ZoomBrowser manages the images from downloading pictures from the camera, to viewing it, and looking at shooting properties. PhotoStitch is a straight-forward program for creating panoramas. I like both of these software and find them easy to use.

The LCD often shows the image brighter than it actually appears when one downloads the image. I usually like to adjust the resulting image so that it appears like it does on the LCD. I use the Image Editor in ZoomBrowser to tweak the color, tone, levels, contrast, saturation, and brightness. This is very easy to do, and it allows people to do some of the image touch ups that a more expensive software like Photoshop can do.


DISLIKES

Finally, I'll talk about what I didn't like about the A590. The biggest issue is the choppy video recording at the highest resolution of 640x480. At this resolution it only records at 20 frames per second (fps). The fps is too low for smooth transitions hence one notices choppiness when panning or when objects move quickly in the video. This is outrageous considering the A570 which it replaces records at a smoother 30 fps. Consumers don’t like the removal of features on newer cameras to save a little money. Smarten up Canon!

Another thing I didn't like is that there is no panorama assist mode. I used to have a Canon PowerShot S40 camera which included this useful mode. Basically, it allows the user to see where the overlap between two pictures are to make it easy to take several pictures in a row for creating a panorama.

Finally, if I had to nit pick I didn't like that there isn't any exposure bracketing, or histogram in the shooting mode. These are more advanced features, but it would have been nice to include. Also, I find the LCD screen is not that high of a resolution. At 115,000 pixels in a 2.5" diagonal dimension, it's not the greatest for previewing. I would have liked double the resolution to 200,000 pixels. If one looks closely (like a few inches away) one can see that it's pixelated. However, for viewing from a foot away it's alright.


SUMMARY

In summary, this is a very competent photographic tool which is able to take excellent shots in capable hands. I highly recommend this camera, and would not hesitate to buy another one if my current camera breaks. After all, it sells at an attractively low price.