Canon PowerShot SD970 IS

Viewfinder (0.00)

Optical viewfinders are becoming harder and harder to find on compact cameras, and the SD970 IS is one more model that’s LCD-only. Given the way the LCD fills up nearly the entire back of the camera it’s hard to imagine how they could have shoehorned a viewfinder in, but it’s still a feature we like to have when the sun is shining, the screen is glaring and we want to take a picture.

Display (6.06)

The large, bright 3-inch LCD is a significant step-up feature with its 410,000-dot resolution (compared to 230,000 dots on most point-and-shoots, and even inexpensive SLRs). Screen brightness can be adjusted to five settings, and your most recently viewed photo (in playback mode) or the current view (in shooting mode) is displayed while you make the adjustment, a visual aid that’s too often forgotten by manufacturers.

An ‘extra’ we found very useful is the option to display a grid guideline overlay on the LCD while shooting. You can choose a nine-box grid pattern, a 3:2 gray bar overlay to preview the printable area, or both simultaneously.

Flash (4.75)

Canon gives the flash range as 1 – 11 ft. (30cm – 3.5m) at the widest setting and 1 – 6.6 ft. (30cm – 2m) at maximum telephoto. You can leave the flash set to auto and let the camera decide when it’s needed, set it to fire with every shot (useful for filling in shadows on bright days) or prevent it from ever firing. Red-eye correction can be turned on in any mode, which turns on the red lamp beside the lens before firing the flash — given the low level of illumination, red-eye reduction is less successful on this camera than other point and shoots.

There is also a slow sync mode that combines the flash firing with a slow shutter speed. This can be useful when taking pictures at night, when the flash illuminates the foreground subject while the slow shutter increases the background exposure.There is no flash exposure compensation control.

We found the small flash bright enough for indoor photography in a fairly large room. Shooting a blank wall in a dark room showed that the flash was quite uneven, though, with a very hot center and rapid falloff at the edges. As for recharge times, the couple of seconds between shots felt about average for a built-in compact camera flash.

Lens (4.50)

The Canon SD970 IS has a 6.6 – 33mm lens (equivalent to a 37 – 185mm in 35mm photography). The 5x zoom is practical for a wide range of shooting situations, though the relatively high-powered telephoto is more impressive than the not very wide angle setting. As with many compact cameras, the zoom isn’t entirely smooth and precise, offering a range of preset positions rather than an entirely free choice of settings.

The close focus distance of 0.79 inch (2cm) allows frame-filling close-ups of very small objects. A digital macro setting is also available to get even closer, but causes image quality degradation unless you’re shooting at low resolutions, making it fairly worthless (and really, isn’t 0.79 inch close enough?).

The photos below show the range of the zoom lens, from its widest setting to maximum telephoto. Canon took two approaches to digital zoom here. First, there’s the typical digital zoom, which provides up to 20x magnification (at the smallest image size setting). Then there’s the ‘digital tele-converter,’ which increases apparent focal length by 1.5 or 2×. This can be used without image quality penalty if you’re shooting at lower-res settings (for example, when shooting at 5 megapixels, the 1.5x zoom doesn’t cause any change in image quality), but generally we want our photos at full resolution, and prefer to crop them in an image editing application later if necessary.

Zoom Ratio Examples
6.6 mm	15.4 mm	33.0 mm

Battery (6.00)

The SD970 IS uses a small rectangular battery, the NB-5L, a 3.7V 1120mAh Lithium ion rechargeable. According to Canon’s testing using CIPA standards, the battery should provide 270 shots, and based on our shooting experience that feels about right. Charging time for a completely depleted battery is about 2 hours. The battery can’t be inserted all the way and the cover closed if you put it in backwards, but it’s easy enough to waste time trying, since the symmetrical shape will fit most of the way into the compartment even if it’s going in backwards or upside down.

Memory (3.00)

The camera accepts widely available, inexpensive SD and SDHC memory cards, along with any leftover MultiMedia, MMCplus or HC MMCplus memory cards you have lying around.

Jacks, Ports & Plugs (5.50)

There are two separate compartments for I/O connections. On top of the right side is an mini-HDMI port for connecting the camera directly to an HDTV for video and photo viewing (you’ll need to buy an optional cable). At the bottom right is a USB port used for both data connection and standard-definition video and audio output, using included cables. We’re not thrilled with the jack compartment covers; they’re stiff and hard to fit back in place. On the other hand, Canon used industry-standard HDMI and USB cables, which makes replacement or buying extras much easier than proprietary connections (better not lose that USB-connected video cable, though).