Canon PowerShot SD970 IS

Manual Controls

The Canon PowerShot SD970 IS does not offer any manual control over exposure or focus.

Focus

Three automatic focus modes are available on the Canon PowerShot SD970 IS. These can be accessed by pressing left on the 4-way controller when in Standard mode. Your options are Normal, Macro and Infinity.

Three autofocus modes are available.

ISO

ISO can be set when using Program mode via the Function Set menu. Here you can set the ISO to Auto or choose a setting between 80 and 1600. There's also an ISO 3200 mode available as a scene mode.

ISO can be set up to 1600.

White Balance

As with most other common settings you use the Function Set menu to adjust white balance on the Canon PowerShot SD970 IS. Your options are Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H and Custom. That last allows you to set the white balance manually using a white card, which is a nice feature to see on a mid-range camera like the SD970 IS.

Five white balance presets are available, in addition to Auto and custom.

Metering

Three metering options are available, which can be adjusted in the Function Set menu. These are Evaluative, Center-Weighted Average and Spot metering.

The SD970 IS offers three metering modes.

Shutter Speed

The Canon PowerShot SD970 IS offers shutter speeds ranging from 15 to 1/1600th of a second. This is an average range, with a bit more room at the long end than we usually see. There's also a long shutter shooting mode available, although we're not sure how long a shutter speed this uses. Canon does indicate that at shutter speeds above 1.3 seconds you can expect to wait twice as long for an exposure as a noise reduction algorithm actually takes two exposures in an attempt to remove noise.

Aperture

The Canon PowerShot SD970 IS has a pedestrian maximum aperture of f/3.2 at the wide end and f/5.8 at the tele end. Frankly at an expected price of $380 we're a bit surprised that the SD970 IS doesn't go down to f/2.8, which would give shooters more flexibility in low light situations.

Image Stabilization

The Canon PowerShot SD970 IS uses optical image stabilization to counteract camera shake, about what we'd expect from a mid-range camera.

Picture Quality & Size Options

The Canon PowerShot SD970 IS offers two levels of image quality, Fine and Normal. You can choose from six different image size options, with a maximum size of 4,000 x 3,000 and a minimum size of 640 x 480. There's also a widescreen option at a resolution of 4000 x 2248.

Picture Effects

Canon offers its own My Color feature to provide various picture effects. These include Vivid, Vivid Blue, Vivid Green, Vivid Red, Neutral, Sepia, Black & White, Positive Film, Lighter Skin Tone, Darker Skin Tone and Custom.These can also be applied after the fact in playback mode if you wish. My Colors can be accessed in the Function Set menu.

Canon's My Colors feature lets you add pretty color effects.