Canon's new point-and-shoot has a full-manual mode, macro functionality, and 8 megapixels, but can it take good pictures?
Review summary of the Canon PowerShot A590 IS:
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 Canon's A590 IS has a manual mode that is as fully-featured as you could expect from a point-and-shoot - ISO, shutter-speed, and f-stop selections are all here, and even a workable custom white-balance - and it's perfectly capable in full-Auto mode as well. The body is a tad chunky and the LCD viewfinder has some quirky image-quality issues, but, especially for its price point, the A590 IS delivers excellent photos for non-professional applications. Release: March 2008. Price: $120.
Pros: Macro feature, pinpoint focus, excellent manual-mode, broad range of shutter speeds, good overall image quality
Cons: Slow image-processing, tends to over-sharpen, rare but serious viewfinder distortion, some fringing issues
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Full Canon PowerShot A590 IS Review:
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Design - Good
The A590 IS has a sturdy build for a camera of its size and weight; not so much bulky as it is stocky and substantial, though still compact. It feels like a camera that won’t fall apart with use. It’s lightweight and reasonably small, though the body itself feels unduly thick and the grip along the right-front contrarily shallow. Batteries and the memory card are readily accessible and A/V connections are easy to find.
The LCD screen is nice and large, essentially as large as possible within the confines of the body, which contrasts heavily with the pointlessly tiny, optical viewfinder centered above it. We couldn’t help but wonder if the camera (and, given the ubiquity of these pinhole viewfinders, all point-and-shoots in general) might be better served with no optical viewfinder and more real-estate for other things.
The A590 IS fits the mold of a standard design: an invariable zoom control surrounds the front-right shutter release; atop the camera is a standard mode wheel; and along the right are various menu controls and a selector to choose between camera and playback mode. Said buttons on the back are a bit small and jumbled and, in a rush, can be difficult to navigate; we felt that a small joystick-style navigator might have served the camera better, but admittedly would have increased its bulk.
Features - Very good
While variable zoom is understandably unlikely on a camera this small, the zoom feature here is jerky and difficult manage: it often zooms in and then haltingly zooms back out a bit, to the degree that the first half of the zoom-range progresses in piecemeal steps instead of continuously. The camera also lacks RAW support and anything beyond SD support, though neither is important in the P&S market. A possible deal-killer, though, is the camera’s sluggish processing: expect a second or two between each photo, killing any chance for rapid picture-taking.
Otherwise, the camera has an excellent array of features for a gamut of shooting styles: for literal point-and-shootists, it has a capable full-auto mode and a bevy of scene-modes; for mid-range users with a specific application in mind, it has both shutter-select and aperture-select modes, and, surprisingly enough, the camera features a full manual-mode that allows independent selection of shutter-speeds, f-stops, and ISO modes. There are also three levels of JPEG compression, with the best being appreciably lossless to the human eye.
The shutter-speed ranges from 15 to 1/2000 seconds, the f-stop from 2.6 to 8.0, and the camera features ISO 80 / 100 / 200 / 400 / 800 / 1600. The A590 IS lacks a bulb release on the shutter (though it’s hardly missed on a point-and-shoot) but has more than enough speed for sports and other fast-motion situations, its aperture range delivers great soft-focus but is middling in terms of deep focus, and the camera features a fantastic range of ISO settings, particularly a crystalline ISO 80. However, the ISO 1600 setting, unsurprisingly, is a sea of noise, making it largely useless for serious applications.
Interface - Very good
The A590 IS’s menu is intuitive and easily navigable, and all of the camera’s settings are accessible within a few button-presses. It also comes with a few programs to facilitate uploading, editing, and printing / email photos off of the camera’s USB connection, and all work as they should via clean, easy to understand interfaces.
The bundle includes a USB cable, an A/V cable, the aforementioned software, and a few other filler CDs.
Image Quality - Very good
For a sub-$200 point-and-shoot camera, the A590 IS spits out quality photos. Its images are detailed, clear and reasonably colorful without looking overly processed. Granted, blowing the photos up to full size revealed, in most cases, a noticeable amount of noise; lucidity is best achieved at ISO 80.
Halo test
The A590 IS excels in high-contrast scenarios: the camera exhibits very little haloing even in dire, shadows-on-bright-background pics. For instance, this sample has branches against a daytime sky, typically a worst-case situation, but halos are only barely visible even at full-size. It also features a good, bright, widely-dispersive flash that results in little of the deer-in-headlights glare of lesser flashes, and none of our test party-shots were besmirched with eerie red-eyes. Speaking of party situations, the A590 IS does well in low-light, even in full-automatic mode: its high-ISO settings (even with their confluent noise) are infinitely preferable to the low-shutter smeariness of most point-and-shoots in dark environs.
Macro test
Experimentalists and weekend artistes should also appreciate the camera’s macro function, which allows for focus on subjects down to a mere 2-inch distance. However, as seen in this example, flash is useless at macro distances, as it throws a shadow due to its proximity to the lens.
Evidence of mild fringing
The A590 IS does exhibit some fringing (usually green), typically in highly patterned photos: it performs worst in shallow images with repeating foregrounds, and in this soft-focus shot of a chain-link fence, fringing is patently visible at full-size along the hard edges of the links and sporadically in the background.
Evidence of over-sharpening
The A590 IS also tends to over-sharpen, particularly in dense or busy images with no obvious subject, and in some cases this leads to ‘grit’ even when zoomed-out. For instance, this sample looks excellent up to 75%, but at full-size it takes on a jagged edginess. Finally, the LCD viewfinder displayed bizarre, neon-green lens-flares in low-light situations, though thankfully they in no way appeared in the photos themselves.
The A590 IS’s video capability allows for 640 by 480 video at 20 fps, another 640 by 480 mode at lower quality but with longer recording times, and finally 320 by 240 at 30 fps. Video quality is acceptable for the market at hand and is more than enough for YouTubing: 20 fps is underpowered for serious videography but fine for Internet streams, and the 320 by 240 mode is excellent for quick and dirty video clips.
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