Digital Trends

Canon PowerShot A590 IS March 4th, 2008 | by David Elrich

Performance and Use

The PowerShot A590 IS comes to life quickly in less than two seconds as the camera boots up and the lens extends. I initially set the camera to Super Fine resolution (3264 x 2448 pixels) then tried out the Easy mode where you cannot change anything other than the flash on/off and zoom in on your subject. Leaving the land of lazy, Auto was next then on to the many manual options. The camera was set to OIS continuous with the digital zoom off.

I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly the camera focused and saved images to the card. The camera has a 9-point AiAF system that’s very responsive. The A590 IS is rated 1.4 frames per second and my results were very close to that. This is good for an 8MP $179 USD camera. If you want more speed--such as 3 fps--think D-SLR but you’ll pay triple the price. After shooting in Easy and Auto, it was time to tweak in the manual modes. The A590 IS goes a bit deeper than other digicams by offering a wide range of apertures from f/2.6 to f/8, ISO from 80-1600 and shutter speeds from 15 seconds to 1/2000th. You can also adjust white balance and there’s even a custom setting to deal with difficult lighting situations. By comparison, many other point-and-shoots offer limited aperture and shutter speed options. The menu system is basic and fairly intuitive. Newbies will have no problem with this camera and the written owner’s manual answers everything fairly quickly and concisely. After blasting through a variety of shots over the course of a week—indoors and out—it was time to make some prints.

Image Courtesy of Canon

What I saw was fairly predictable. Shots taken outdoors were very solid with accurate colors in the “natural” Canon style I’ve always liked. The camera handled mixed light situations quite well but some detail was lost in shadows. Digital noise was kept under control until you hit ISO 800—which is pretty darn good given the price. I’d definitely try to keep it at ISO 400 and below for a decent 8x10. The optical image stabilization worked very well. I could really see it with still life subjects (a flower arrangement, for example). Images taken with the flash and then with the flash forced off were reasonably close. OIS is a real boon for taking shots in available light and is a feature everyone should look for in their next digicam. Realize it’s not perfect and unless you use a tripod with a cable release there will always be a touch of blur. Face Detection also worked well although I must admit I did like FD with auto red-eye reduction on the Fujifilm F50fd a little better. Still you’ll be happy with these people shots.

Conclusion

Canon has another winner on its hands—this camera will sell by the shipload. At less than $179 USD, the 8MP PowerShot A590IS takes the type of shots casual photographers need captured (landscapes, people and so on) and does the job well. Although there are a few flaws such as a limited high-end video mode and some loss in shadow detail, this digicam does what it’s expected to do with a minimum of fuss and bother. Other camera companies are going to have a tough time competing with this baby.



Pros:

• Very affordable
• Optical Image Stabilization
• Takes solid, accurate photos

Cons:

• So-so LCD quality (only 115K pixels)
• Only 20 fps at best video quality
• Would prefer wider-angle lens