If your idea of manual mode is being able to select a number of ISO settings, exposure compensation and white balance presets that’s fine, but we think Canon is being a little, shall we say, imaginative with its choice of terminology.

Canon has moved the power button from the top and placed it at the back

The menu system is a little fiddly and doesn’t give you much time to make up your mind, so you often find yourself re-pressing buttons to return to the menu screen. The selection ring worked but it’s not the most ergonomic system we’ve used. However, the Ixus 970 warms up fast and there’s minimal shutter lag.

In continuous shooting mode, it takes around 1.5 seconds to fire off a shot, but this almost doubles if you use the flash. As expected, the extra long zoom is one of the camera’s highlights, but as we said earlier, not so great if you’re trying to squeeze in a wide angle shot.

Sample shots
Click for full-size images

The Ixus 970 IS was good at reproducing subtleties in light and shade, as this picture illustrates

At ISO 1600 you can clearly see the noise on this toy dinosaur

Related Reviews

• Review Nikon Coolpix S710 compact camera (19 November 2008)
• Review Canon Digital Ixus 80 IS compact camera (27 May 2008)
• Review Pentax Optio V20 compact camera (16 May 2008)
• Review Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS20 compact camera (7 May 2008)
• Review Kodak EasyShare M893 IS compact camera (1 May 2008)
• Review Olympus µ1010 compact camera (9 April 2008)
• Review Canon Digital Ixus 960 IS compact camera (1 April 2008)
• Review VuPoint Solutions FS-C1-VP slide scanner (25 March 2008)
• Review Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX33 (14 March 2008)
• Review Pentax Optio E40 compact camera (22 February 2008)