The resolution and size of the screen on this camera is absolutely incredible. Pictures and video look really sharp. Screen is anti-reflective too. HD video is outstanding. Taped a table tennis match, the video and sound were both extremely clear and the movement was incredibly smooth, due to the 30 fps. I am not so impressed with camera's auto mode, while indoors, yet. Colors were off, maybe due to the white balance and low light. I find myself using the "P" mode mostly and making small adjustments to the white balance and adjusting the "my colors" section. Overall its a beautiful looking camera and feels good in the hands. I like the two tone color scheme. You have to watch your fingers, on your left, hand so they don't block the flash, it's very easy to do.Update: Digital Zoom.
Most people advise you to disable digital zoom because of the resolution degradation when using it, however on this camera the digital zoom is fantastic, with very little resolution degradation seen and digital zoom can be used while in Video mode.
Update Foliage Program mode,8/2009:
I have been using the foliage mode for outdoor scenic shots lately. In this mode the greens, blues, are brilliantly enhanced making scenic pics pop out with bright color, some may like or dislike for the colors do not represent the true colors viewed. I like this mode, especially if the light your shooting in is not right, this mode will brighten the colors and make your photo less boring. I recommend previewing each shot before you move on to make sure the colors are not too saturated. I found that as the light changes this may happen.
Update: March 2010
Get the Canon S90, much, much better camera than the SD970,. The S90 also has low light sensors that make any indoor picture almost perfect. With the S90 you get professional results!
.................SD970......SD960......Comment
Optical zoom...5x..........4x..........Plus
LCD size.........3"..........2.8"........plus
LCD dot ......461k........230k.........Big plus
Zoom Blur......yes ........no..........no
The 5x optical zoom makes the picture 50% larger. So, I think it is a worthy improvement. However, it is offset by the wider angle lens of SD960.
The LCD size and resolution are a very worthy improvement. Although it is 3" vs 2.8", the actual screen sizes are quite different because SD970 has 4:3 aspect ratio and SD960 has 2:1 aspect ration. For normal 4:3 pictures, SD960 can only use 2/3 of screen to show the picture while SD970 uses all screen. With twice many pixels, you can view the pictures quite well. It is almost better than most of small stand-alone picture frames in the market. I actually can use SD970 as a very comfortable reading glasses for the fine print on the medicine bottle. I played one SD960 in a store and I can not see whether the picture was in focus very well.
The zoom blur did not produce great pictures, although it was fun to do.
I think the price difference (~$65) is a little bit large for the performance difference. But, I do enjoy the differences.
Other comments:
(1) mini-HDMI cable: I was not aware how great the HDMI feature is until I bought one cable from a local store. It is a great experience that many people can view the slide show and HD video on your HDTV. Although I complained about how expensive the cable was. But, the experience justifies the purchase of the cable. I bought a cheaper 3rd party HDMI cable and it works well.
(2)Sound quality of HD video:
I guess Canon engineers just did not have room to put the microphone at the front surface of the camera, they put it on the top which can be easily covered by your fingers. But, the more annoying issue is that, because the top surface is tilting backward, your voice becomes much louder than the people in front of you. In addition, you need to make sure your hands do not rub the camera when shooting. Otherwise, noise will be generated.
If you zoom when shooting video, the camera performs only digital zoom. And, it will record a quite noticeable noise when the zoom action stops.
Overall, I still rate this camera 5 stars because it is well designed and built. The user interface is better than my 4-year-old Canon S3 IS and is
far better than other brands.
Finally, it was very amusing to see how hard my brother-in-law had to try to prove his >$5000 Canon 5D dSLR is still a far better camera than this little thing. Yes, my SD970 lost in most of picture quality categories. But, it did not lose without a decent fight. At the end, my sister-in-law is thinking of buying a SD970. So, it lost a battle but won a heart!!
SD970 is a camera for two person, one want to just point and shoot for precious moments and one wants to use the program mode to make great pictures.First off, be aware this camera comes with no memory card, so unless you want to be like the kid that got a battery-powered toy for Christmas, and no batteries, plan ahead! Also, the A/V cable included is for standard RCA video inputs, which is fine, since almost everyone has something to plug that into, but for the HD output, you'll need the optional Mini-HDMI Cable. I've tried both cables, and if you have an HD TV, you'll want the HDMI cable.
The manual is pretty brief; it omits some information such as how to set the "owner name" in the camera (hint: use the "Camera Window" software and click on the magic icon in the upper right corner), and how to upload custom startup images and sounds for the camera operations. The manual was obviously not proofread by a native English speaker, and many parts tell you what a setting is, but not how to get to that feature. There appears to be about 3 different types of menus, depending on the mode.
Now for the neat stuff! There are 3 modes, video, camera, and auto; the main differences between camera and auto are that auto mode trys to figure out everything; and does a pretty good job. Portrait? Landscape? No problem. The camera mode lets you fiddle with everything, and has several preset modes for common situations, and for fine-tuning things like white balance, and ISO speed. These various "Program" features have an auto-preview of the effect when browsing through the menu choices, which is a nice touch.
You cannot set aperture priority nor shutter priority, but you can give it some hints to approximate this; there is a "kids & pets" mode that obviously is high shutter speed priority.
I've taken about 100 images in the last couple days, and have been very pleased with the results. The digital zoom image quality is fantastic. I needed to use a tripod on a cloudy day when the effective zoom was 20x, but the resulting image showed no jaggies at all. The macro focus worked so well, that when I tried to move the camera a little closer in, the lens hit the sidewalk!
Viewing photos and videos on the camera is pretty easy. It will automatically group photos into categories based on the auto mode (portrait, etc.) or you can put photos into categories manually, to filter what you want to see. The "shake" method to advance from one photo to the next didn't work too well for me; I had to give it a pretty good shake, and I couldn't seem to have it go backward. The auto-rotate feature for viewing photos taken in portrait orientations works great.
The video function works easy and you can upload the videos to your PC (in .mov format), and the software can convert it to .avi format also.I bought the SD970IS camera after weeks of doing research online and physically going to electronic stores to view the cameras in person. The three cameras that I was choosing between were the Canon SD780IS, SD960Is and finally decided to buy the SD970IS and here's why:
When I started looking I first read reviews on cnet.com and amazon.com. Cnet.com gave all the models a good to very good rating, however they didn't like the price to feature ratio with the SD970IS but everything else was great. The retail price for the SD970IS is $379.99 and I guess based on that price I would have probably not bought it, but as always I researched the pricing online and amazon.com once again had the best price at the time which was . At the time everyone else including buy.com, bestbuy.com and even ebay was selling it for close to full retail.
I previously owned a Nikon S50c and it worked fine it just seemed like a camera that you had to "baby" and didn't fit comfortably in your hands. The SD970IS is not as compact or slim as my old Nikon or the SD960IS or the tiny SD780IS but it can still be placed in a pocket. The most important thing is however that it feels great in your hand and doesn't seem fragile like the Nikon or the SD780IS.
I've been using the camera now for a couple of weeks and so far here's my list of pros & cons (very few):
PROS:
1. 3.0 LCD inch display with double the resolution of all three cameras.
2. HD Video is amazing with HDMI out
3. Picture quality is amazing including the 5x optical zoom and even the total 20x digital zoom is great.
4. Battery life is much better than any other cameras I've owned (approx. 250 shots)
5. "Blink" indicator that works great if someone blinks
6. The auto feature on the camera (I know that some reviews state that this function doesn't work very well, however I never take it off this setting because it adjusts to every shot automatically and I haven't had any issues with picture quality in this mode.)
7. Menu navagation is very simple and straightforward.
CONS:
1. Slightly bigger than I'm use to but still very compact
2. Noisy when zooming in and out (may be due to 5x optical zoom)I am a big canon fan and have been patiently waiting for the release of the SD970 since canon's announcment prior to the 2009 PMA. In the following review my basis for comparison is the new sony w290 and my experience owning a canon SD700. I sent the SD970 back to Amazon after using it for about 1 hour.
What is good:
1.Great screen
2.Solid feel, amoung the best I have seen for an ultracompact
3.Picture quality is the best of the ultra-compacts that I have seen
4.You can program one of the camera buttons to perform functions as you wish. I used this feature to start the video mode
What is not so perfect:
1.After focusing, there is an annoying delay when pushing the take picture button. So when you have that perfect moment when your kids are finally smiling and push the button you have to wait about a third of a second. It does not sound like much but it is the difference between getting a great photo and an okay one. The picture quality is outstanding, but if you can't capture the moment it just does not work for me. The sony w290 which does not take the same consistant quality of pictures does react much faster.
2.Filming in HD. The camera allows you to zoom in and out but when playing back the clip you can hear a significantly irrating sound similar to someone eating potato chips right next to you. This is not cool and was a big disappointment. (the sony w290 does not allow any zooming if you assume that having the ability to zoom and an annoying sound is better than not having the ability to zoom you'd be wrong, its that annoying)
3.There is no continous shooting mode while in the Auto-everything setting. So if you are like me and like to hold down the capture button to make sure take a few photos you are out of luck. The sony w290 lets you do this.
Summary
Great photo quality, but disppointing delivery. My personal conclusion and recommendation is to purchase the sony w290 (basically the same features), which does not take quite the quality of pictures but will allow you to snap photos in continous mode and much faster response times on snapping photos.
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