One of Canon's latest digital cameras is the Canon PowerShot A590 IS, which is a mid-line budget camera that looks a little bulky, but works very nicely and impresses with its quality pictures. It's an 8-megapixel camera with 4x optical zoom, image stabilization, and more that packs quite a punch in its clunky body that will cost you $200 or less.
The body itself measures roughly 3.5 x 1.5 x 2.5-inches and weighs around 6 ounces and feels actually quite bulky due to the large bulge on the one side for the two AA batteries. The back of the camera has a 2.5-inch LCD screen, the optical viewfinder, a sliding switch to change shooting modes, and a few buttons. It isn't what we would consider a "pocket camera", but it's still portable in the sense it can be carried around in your hand or in a small bag.
The Canon PowerShot A590 IS has a lot of image controls for customization in taking pictures. It offers things such as manual exposure control, shutter priority, aperture priority and several scene modes. If you don't want to fiddle around with these settings, you can of course shoot in automatic mode. Canon also included "Optical Image Stabilization", which actually moves the lens focal point just slightly to reduce blurriness from shaking the camera. It supports microSD flash memory cards for photo storage.
The lens that comes attached to the PowerShot A590 IS is actually pretty powerful. It is equivalent to a 35-to-140mm lens, f/2.6-to-f/5.5 lens with allows for a wider aperture than most other comparable cameras. The A590 IS does accept other lenses by means of a $25 adapter that allows for the use of other lenses, such as telephoto or wide-angle lenses.
The only thing we were a little disappointed with the PowerShot A590 IS is the mildly slow picture-to-picture shooting speed. Between shots, it takes the camera at least 2 seconds before it can take another picture, which can hinder your ability to take action shots. With the flash enabled, the shot speed increased further.
In terms of image quality, they aren't digital SLR quality, but they aren't anywhere near poor. In fact, they are quite nice and will please casual to above-average photographers. This camera is well-suited for those of you wanting an inexpensive, easy-to-use, portable, point-and-shoot camera that produces decent images. The image stabilization feature also allows for very clear pictures regardless of the camera's movement when taking photos.
