Review: Canon Powershot A590 IS

GOOD VALUE: Canon's Powershot A590 is a good buy for those on a budget who are looking for a bit more grunt.

Relevant offers

Gadget reviews

Review: Sony USB turntable Guide to digital SLRs Review: Leapfrog Tag Battle of the USB modems Guide to digital cameras Guide to buying computer speakers Guide to educational websites Review: Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Review: Catcha Beast Review: Nokia N96

The Powershot A590 ($349) is a good all-round 8MP camera at a good price, though you are paying a bit extra (about $50) for an optical image stabilizer to make photos less blurry.

For most people paying the extra will be worth it.

Canon's Powershot brand is its bulkier compact, but if you don't mind a bit of bulk you can find a great deal with the A590.

It comes with 8MP (which is oodles for most people) and a 4X optical zoom. The optical image stabilisation - standard on pricier models, but still not that common on the cheap end - is a nice touch that makes photos less blurry, so you'll see more detail and look like a better photographer.

There's also a 4X digital zoom.

The layout of the buttons is pretty standard for a compact digicam. The on/off button is a small one on the top (it's not hard to find and push though). Next to it is the mode wheel, where you set which shooting mode (night, portrait, etc), the zoom and the camera shutter.

There's also an "Easy" mode which stops you making any changes other than turning on/off the flash or zooming. Useful when giving the camera to your kids or parents, so they don't accidentally through off the white balance with their random button pushing.

On the back there's are navigation and menu buttons, as well as shortcuts for deleting images, change the LCD brightness, and download images. Switching between camera and play modes is done with a switch on the back rather than the mode wheel, which I quite liked once I got used to it.

You can switch lenses to a telephoto, wide angle or close-up one, but you have to buy these separately.

The 2.5 inch LCD screen performed competently in bright sunlight, though if you're used to higher-end models may be disappointed (this one is only 115,000 pixels). There's a viewfinder as a backup, and you can switch off the display completely to use it.

The shape fitted comfortably in my hand for horizontal and vertical shots.

Video and sound was adequate for a camera at this price, though it's stuck on 20 frames per second, which is a bit low.

Other nice extras include "sound memo", where you can record short voice clips and assign them to a photo to explain things later (useful for preventing the "why did I take this photo again?" when going through them later), and a "protect" function where you can stop yourself from accidentally deleting your favourite images (even with the "erase all" function).

There was a bit more shutter lag (the time between pressing the button and the camera taking the photo) than I would have liked, but not much. It powers up in less than 2 seconds.

It's powered by two AA batteries instead of a rechargeable lithium ion - better for travelling, worse for your wallet and the environment (unless you're on rechargeable AAs).

There are also scenes you might not expect on a camera at this price. On the mode wheel there are the usual landscape, portrait and night-time settings, as well as a kids and pets one which helps when shooting "objects that move around", according to the manual, so I guess that means unexpectantly.

I don't have any kids or pets to test it on (and it's not like I can go to the park and start taking photos of other people's), so I couldn't test this.

Other scenes not on the mode dial include the usual snow, beach, sunset, and fireworks, as well as an indoor aquarium one, which I can't imagine most people would use very often. 

Also included is face detection, which focuses automatically on people's faces in a photo. This worked quite well.

The quality of the images was good, particularly for the price, thanks to the optical stablizer.

While it has no stand-out features, overall the Powershot A590 is a solid performer, and good value for the money.

The Canon Powershot A590 IS is $349.