Canon Ixus 980IS

Dan Bolt · Issue 46, Jan/Feb 2009 · pp. 25–27

Products mentioned: Canon Ixus 980IS, Canon WP-DC27 housing, Inon AD lenses, Sea&Sea YS-27DX strobes

Recently arrived on the ultra- compact digital market is the top- of-the-range Canon Ixus 980IS (or SD990 in America). It’s headline grabbing 14 megapixels alone are enough to tempt most non-diving folk, but there are a few more changes over the traditional Ixus setup that suddenly makes it worth a second look for us underwater-types. Firstly, and at long last, Canon have added a Manual mode to the Ixus suite of gadgets - thank you Canon! So if you are looking for a little more control over your imagery you can now play with f-stops and fractions of a second to your heart’s content. The brain of the camera has had an upgrade too, the Digic IV chip now shoots movies in .MOV mode which means you can cram 50% more video per Gb of SD memory than before and for no real loss of quality from what I’ve seen. If you’re like me and have over- sized hands and fingers, these small cameras can be qui…