Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18807 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Canon
• Model: 3470B006AA
• Released on: 2009-04-30
• Dimensions: .35 pounds

Features

• Canon Digital Camera Ixus 990 Silver
  • Canon Ixus 990 IS 12 MP digital camera• Features 5x optical zoom with optical IS; smart auto mode and scene detection technology; motion detection and face detection technologies; 3 inch LCD screen; i-

Manufacturer's Description

Canon Digital IXUS 990 IS - Zoom in on life's finer moments.

Manufacturers Product Description
The elegant Digital IXUS 990 IS features a 5x optical zoom for impressive telephoto reach. Shoot 12.1 MP stills easily with a range of intelligent technologies, or record breathtaking HD video.

Benefits

12.1 Megapixels
The number of megapixels determines the amount of sharp detail a digital camera can record. With more megapixels, you can print at larger sizes, plus crop and enlarge without sacrificing quality. IXUS cameras provide all the resolution you need for finely detailed, photo-quality prints with plenty of scope for post-shoot cropping. A 12.1 Megapixel sensor lets you capture every scene in ultra-high levels of detail - perfect for turning your experiences into poster-sized photo prints.

5x Optical Zoom
Get the shot you want with a powerful 5x Optical Zoom and genuine Canon optics. Not only does the zoom get you up close quickly, but Canon optical technology ensures that your shots are bright, clear, and alive with true, vivid color.

Optical Image Stabilizer
Any slight shake while hand-holding a camera can cause blurred photos. Canon's optical Image Stabilizer (IS) technology ensures crisp, clear images by detecting and correcting this camera shake. The camera is able to microscopically adjust its own lens with absolute accuracy up to 4,000 times every second, so the image you see is the image you capture. Image Stabilizer is especially useful at full zoom, which exaggerates camera movements, and in low-light settings that call for slower shutter speeds.

Smart Auto Mode
Smart Auto has the intelligence to recognise 18 different scenes, from Portrait and Landscape right through to Macro (Close-Up). With AUTO Mode engaged, you no longer have to worry about selecting options from the camera menu. You are safe in the knowledge that your camera will use the most appropriate settings to optimise your image. For extra simplicity, the Easy mode function reduces the amount of information shown and all buttons except the shutter and flash are disabled. In Easy Mode the Digital IXUS 990 IS exemplifies the term "point and shoot".

Motion Detection
With the inclusion of DIGIC 4, Canon's Motion Detection Technology now has more accurate judgement of subject speed. The 4 key detections are still made: Changes in brightness detected by the AE function; Changes between frames - pixel shift; Face Detection movements; Camera shake detected by the IS system

When the camera detects a face, Motion Detection Technology will now adaptively vary the shutter speed according to the speed of the face movement. The amount of camera shake is also taken into consideration and the aperture is set to obtain the optimum exposure for that perfect shutter speed. When the widest possible aperture does not provide a good exposure the ISO speed is increased.

Face Detection, Self Timer and Blink Detection
Utilising the power of DIGIC 4, Canon's Face Detection Technology ensures superb people shots by automatically detecting subjects in the frame and setting the correct focus, flash level and exposure. With Blink Detection technology turned on the camera will show a warning that a person in the photo had their eyes closed. This displays for three seconds whilst reviewing the shot right after shooting. With face detection self timer, the camera records the number of people detected when the self-timer is started. If photographer enters the frame (i.e. the number of people increases), the camera detects this and adjusts the focus and exposure. So you can take your time to get into the picture as the camera will wait until you are detected.

Red Eye Correction
The popular feature can now remove red-eye automatically during shooting, as well as in playback mode.

DIGIC 4
Processing the vast amount of data generated by the Digital IXUS 990 IS calls for power and speed. Enter DIGIC 4 with iSAPS technology, Canon's most advanced imaging processor yet. It is the power of DIGIC that delivers the superb image quality, responsive camera performance, faster AF, faster continuous shooting and extended battery life. DIGIC processors are so fast they can read, process, compress and write image data back to the buffer between exposures, reducing the data bottleneck for extended continuous shooting.

3.0" LCD Screen
The camera's 3.0-inch LCD screen gives you the big picture, whether you're shooting, reviewing or showing off your images. This extra-durable, high-resolution screen with tough scratch-resistant coating on the anti-reflective, PureColor LCD II screen offers a crisp, clear picture to make shooting, playback and using the camera's menu functions especially convenient.

HD Movies
Shoot super-smooth, VGA quality movies with sound. In-camera editing gives you creative control and slow-motion playback highlights every precious moment. With the new HDMI connection, shoot HD quality movies straight from your camera. Direct movie playback is possible via the HDMI connection and Image playback is also possible through HDMI for slideshows and review.

Additional Features

Optical Viewfinder
The viewfinder can be used to conserve power by turning the LCD monitor off while shooting. Use the LCD monitor to compose close-ups in macro mode since images composed with the viewfinder may be off-center.

My Colours
Add a personal touch to your image or movie with Canon's My Colours. Choose from vivid blue for the sky, antique sepia for the portrait or classic black and white for the landscape. These creative options and many more - normally available only on a computer - can be applied directly from your camera, before or after the shot.

Canon Image Gateway
Open up a world of online digital photography with CANON iMAGE GATEWAY. Register your new Canon digital product today and start enjoying 100MB of online space for sharing photos with friends and family. Create themed photo albums with customised layouts and backgrounds. Order photo prints directly from your online photo album. Get hints, tips and ideas, plus customise your camera with great start-up images and sounds. With CANON iMAGE GATEWAY, you can.

Box Contains

Customer Reviews

Canon IXUs 990 IS
I blindly bought this camera as it was the top of the range in the Canon Compact category and thought it should have everything the lower models do and a bit more. I also bought the "SanDisk Extreme III SDHC 8Gb High Performance Card - 30Mb/s edition" and the "DC-770 Camera Case".

+ve
Overall I will say that I have not been disappointed! It is a superb camera!

This camera has so many features, it is unbelievable. It also behaves a bit like a Wii controller, i.e. you can tilt the camera to skip to the next photo while viewing them...now that's what I call a wow factor!

Ease of use...This camera is very user friendly and the most it has taken me to find/locate a feature or option was 30 seconds.

Video Shoot Quality...Part of the reason I bought this camera was for the advertised HD video recording. I will admit that the quality of the movies I shot was unbelievable in terms of the High Definition (colour and quality).

Photo Settings...There are about 30 different photos shoot settings to choose from. Ok, some of them you may never use, but most of them are useful and very clever in terms of manipulating the colour, light and adding effects.

12 Mega Pixel Photos...Only a 1 Second delay between each shot.

Continous Shoot...There was only a delay of a few milliseconds between each shot.

Focus...I have taken crisp clear photos of objects about 3cms away from the lens. I was shocked to see SLR quality photos...i.e. it is similar in terms of focus, i.e. it will focus automatically on the important part of the object (or where you tell it to) and the rest will be out of focus...meaning a perfect shot.

Compression...The compression used in this camera is very clever...even when I took photos at full size 12 megapixel, the size of the photo files remained under 3mb.

Video Software...The software provided with this camera (Zoom Browser) offers you with the option to save or export the HD Movie (.MOV) as an AVI file (with lower quality, meaning it can be played easily on most low spec computers).

-ve
Video Quality...I found it had a tiny short coming as other compact cameras movie shooting, i.e. when you move around the camera while making a movie, it was a very 'tiny' bit jerky or you could say not as smooth as conventional video cameras, but that may be due to my next point:

Video Shoot Zoom...It does not focus when you zoom while making a movie, meaning zoom is more or less obsolete while movie shooting, unless you zoom first and then shoot. However, this is a photo camera, so I suppose it cannot really be compared with a conventional video camera.

A little advice...if you have a low spec computer, you will not be able to view the HD videos (as .MOV) properly. This is not a fault with the camera, instead HD video requires a high spec computer/video card for playback.

This is a 5* Camera and I only gave it 4* due to the issue with the Video.

Just the job
I bought this camera to take pictures of my daughter's graduation and was not disappointed with either! The picture quality is excellent and enabled me to enlarge distant group shots without loss of clarity. I have had a Canon Ixus before and so found it easy to use as the menus and controls are very similar. A bonus is the HD video but you need to buy a decent sized SD card to make the most of this feature. The only downside is the lack of viewfinder (my old Ixus had one) as even though the screen is large it is still difficult to see what you are up to in bright sunlight and for this reason alone I've knocked a star off.

An excellent camera!
I bought the IXUS 990 about a month ago.

I am pleased with my purchase, although I do accept that the camera is quite expensive.

What I like about it -
It is small. I bought a Napoli 20 case for it and it fits fine. The camera is slightly larger that the Isux 90 that I was using, but it is still small enough to fit into your pocket. I think this is a real plus for a small point and shoot. BTW my wife is now using my Ixus 90 as a replacement for her Ixus 75 and she likes the 90.
The 3 inch screen is excellent - very bright and clear.
The 12.1 mp allows for fairly extensive cropping of pictures - which I like to do on the pc.
Although other cameras have provided a video capability, this is the first one that I have used for video as well as still photos. I am happy with the results - just dont expect the quality of a good dedicated video camera.
The 5 times optical zoom is great for a camera of this size! It also has a 20 times digital zoom - great for seeing what is far away, but the picture quality will always suffer when compared with the optical zoom.
BTW it has lots of features for you to play with.

What I dont like about it -
The price!

Other tips -
Buy a case for it (I bought a Napoli 20).
Buy a new card for it (I use a 4gb sandisk Extreme III).