Canon PowerShot A590 IS Digital Camera
- Digital Zoom: 4x
- Camera Type: Standard Point and Shoot
- Weight: 0.39 lb.
- LCD Screen Size: 2.5 in.
- Resolution: 8.3 Megapixel
- Optical Zoom: 4x
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Canon PowerShot A590 - Point, Shoot, Brilliant!
Pros
Can take a lickin' and keep tickin', good pictures, plenty of choices
Cons
Can take some time to get used to (especially after using film all your life)
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
It's a good little digital camera that has a lot of options for a variety of users, a little heavier than traditional film cameras, but I'm impressed with its survivability.
Understand that I’m not an avid camera person, nor am I an expert in the world of cameras. But if you’re an average person looking for a review by an average person, then you’ve come to the right place.
This is my dad’s camera. However, anytime we go somewhere that demands camera action, I become the wielder of it. It was a gift from my sister, so I have no idea what it cost. But it’s been a good little camera for all the years we’ve used it. We’ve taken many, many photos outside, inside, with light, without much light, and even a video or two to post up on YouTube.
It Comes With…
Typical USB cords for connecting it to your computer and the like, a wrist strap, CD with Canon photo software (totally optional), two cheapy AA batteries, and a small memory card. Take my advice and chuck the memory card now. It’s tiny compared to today’s standards. 32MB if I remember right. You might as well pay $5 and nab a 4GB card instead. There’s another reason I recommend doing this as well, but we’ll get to that.
Options
There are so many options on this camera, I’m not going to list them all. I’ll admit – part of that is because I don’t know what they all are. I’m not the sort of person to just go around taking pictures of everything in every day life and neither is my dad. This camera mostly gets used on special occasions, holidays, and trips.
There are several modes you can put the camera in depending upon what situation you might be in. A quick twist of the button at the top and you can be in:
Easy Mode
Portrait
Landscape
Night Snapshot
Kids & Pets
Indoor
Night Scene
Compact
A press of the Function button and you’ll find yourself seeing all sorts of options on the viewing screen. Make sure you keep the manual for this little guy handy because you’re likely going to need it. You can switch sizes on photos, from 640x480 to 3264x2248. It has red eye removing power (or at least, does what it can for doing so). Naturally if you don’t like a photo you’ve taken or a video you’ve made, you can delete it right then and there. You can also do a few other things before ever transferring it over to your computer, but again, I’ve never had the need to mess with all these options. I’m just a simple point and shoot girl. I’m sure they’re great for people more advanced, but even if you’re like me, it’s a handy little camera.
Using the Camera
If I need to know something extra and can’t figure it out by playing around with the camera myself, I’ll get out the manual. The manual covers everything and makes it clear what button you need to press in order to get what you want. And if you ever lose your manual, don’t worry. The power of the Internet can mean a quickly downloaded PDF in no time.
Like any camera, it’s simple enough to use. Point it at what you want, hold down the button, and click! Memories are captured forever. I’ve been the photo girl during Christmas and Thanksgiving, my sister’s graduation and when seeing our dog dive into the pool after his favorite ball. I’ve taken it into the mountains and taken shots of full moons over tall peaks, or long roads that wind down steep sides. That all sounds very romantic, but in the end it is just a camera doing what I want it to do.
The pictures are very nice, but you have to make sure you’re zoomed in just right and holding still so the image doesn’t get jostled and go blurry. It can be tough if you don’t have the kind of time you want to take. Like when you see a coyote striding alongside the road at a surprisingly close distance. The shot didn’t come out all that bad, but I do wonder sometimes if I wouldn’t have done better with our Elph camera. Likewise, using the full zoom in power means you really ought to get a tripod to ensure a steady shot (that is, if has tripod abilities – I’m not entirely sure). This baby can go in as much as 16x if you want, but you’ll need a still hand to keep free of blurage. And what you see in the viewer actually isn’t what will show up in the shot. I took a picture of a little ceramic statue at this strength, and the view screen showed a very grainy, not-so-very-detailed image. However, a click later, the image I received wasn’t all that bad. Of course, if you want some serious zoom shots, you’re likely better off buying something meant for that anyway.
If you don’t use this camera a fair amount, getting it to take pictures the way you want can sometimes be a bit confusingish. For example, I’m inside the house taking a picture of my dog. Do I want the Indoor option of the Kids & Pets option? And why are those two lumped together anyway? Sometimes the flash goes and I realize it would be better without the flash. Maybe I ought to read the manual some more. In the end, I’m used to normal people shots and landscapes, and those are pretty hard to screw up even if you don’t know which setting you want.
The one thing where I must give extra props to this camera is its surprising durability. Not that I’ve dropped it a dozen times, oh no. But I did once. On some rocks. In the mountains. And then it bounced into a small pool of water (we were by a huge waterfall). I immediately fished it out and went into panic mode drying it, blowing water out of the button cracks, shaking it and doing everything possible to get it free of water. Opened the back to dry the batteries and the memory card. At first all seemed well. I even managed to take another picture. Then a moment later, it wigged out. Buttons didn’t work. It said the memory card was full. I freaked. I thought we were not only going to lose all the pictures but that I’d trashed my dad’s camera. Awesome.
But I left it out to dry overnight and the next day it seemed to respond. A bit. However it kept saying that the memory card was full. Even after I deleted a few pictures from it. I prayed it was just the memory card glitching. Turns out it was. When I bought a new Sandisk 4 GB memory card (which is waterproof, by the way), the camera went right back to normal. It takes pictures just like before, all the buttons respond, and all is well. Thank you Canon for making a camera good enough to survive a crack on some rocks and a dip in some mountain water, and for saving me from having to buy a brand new digital camera.
If you need a good digital camera with a nice array of options, quality photos, and some impressive resilience, then this is definitely one little camera you should look into.
NT
This is my dad’s camera. However, anytime we go somewhere that demands camera action, I become the wielder of it. It was a gift from my sister, so I have no idea what it cost. But it’s been a good little camera for all the years we’ve used it. We’ve taken many, many photos outside, inside, with light, without much light, and even a video or two to post up on YouTube.
It Comes With…
Typical USB cords for connecting it to your computer and the like, a wrist strap, CD with Canon photo software (totally optional), two cheapy AA batteries, and a small memory card. Take my advice and chuck the memory card now. It’s tiny compared to today’s standards. 32MB if I remember right. You might as well pay $5 and nab a 4GB card instead. There’s another reason I recommend doing this as well, but we’ll get to that.
Options
There are so many options on this camera, I’m not going to list them all. I’ll admit – part of that is because I don’t know what they all are. I’m not the sort of person to just go around taking pictures of everything in every day life and neither is my dad. This camera mostly gets used on special occasions, holidays, and trips.
There are several modes you can put the camera in depending upon what situation you might be in. A quick twist of the button at the top and you can be in:
Easy Mode
Portrait
Landscape
Night Snapshot
Kids & Pets
Indoor
Night Scene
Compact
A press of the Function button and you’ll find yourself seeing all sorts of options on the viewing screen. Make sure you keep the manual for this little guy handy because you’re likely going to need it. You can switch sizes on photos, from 640x480 to 3264x2248. It has red eye removing power (or at least, does what it can for doing so). Naturally if you don’t like a photo you’ve taken or a video you’ve made, you can delete it right then and there. You can also do a few other things before ever transferring it over to your computer, but again, I’ve never had the need to mess with all these options. I’m just a simple point and shoot girl. I’m sure they’re great for people more advanced, but even if you’re like me, it’s a handy little camera.
Using the Camera
If I need to know something extra and can’t figure it out by playing around with the camera myself, I’ll get out the manual. The manual covers everything and makes it clear what button you need to press in order to get what you want. And if you ever lose your manual, don’t worry. The power of the Internet can mean a quickly downloaded PDF in no time.
Like any camera, it’s simple enough to use. Point it at what you want, hold down the button, and click! Memories are captured forever. I’ve been the photo girl during Christmas and Thanksgiving, my sister’s graduation and when seeing our dog dive into the pool after his favorite ball. I’ve taken it into the mountains and taken shots of full moons over tall peaks, or long roads that wind down steep sides. That all sounds very romantic, but in the end it is just a camera doing what I want it to do.
The pictures are very nice, but you have to make sure you’re zoomed in just right and holding still so the image doesn’t get jostled and go blurry. It can be tough if you don’t have the kind of time you want to take. Like when you see a coyote striding alongside the road at a surprisingly close distance. The shot didn’t come out all that bad, but I do wonder sometimes if I wouldn’t have done better with our Elph camera. Likewise, using the full zoom in power means you really ought to get a tripod to ensure a steady shot (that is, if has tripod abilities – I’m not entirely sure). This baby can go in as much as 16x if you want, but you’ll need a still hand to keep free of blurage. And what you see in the viewer actually isn’t what will show up in the shot. I took a picture of a little ceramic statue at this strength, and the view screen showed a very grainy, not-so-very-detailed image. However, a click later, the image I received wasn’t all that bad. Of course, if you want some serious zoom shots, you’re likely better off buying something meant for that anyway.
If you don’t use this camera a fair amount, getting it to take pictures the way you want can sometimes be a bit confusingish. For example, I’m inside the house taking a picture of my dog. Do I want the Indoor option of the Kids & Pets option? And why are those two lumped together anyway? Sometimes the flash goes and I realize it would be better without the flash. Maybe I ought to read the manual some more. In the end, I’m used to normal people shots and landscapes, and those are pretty hard to screw up even if you don’t know which setting you want.
The one thing where I must give extra props to this camera is its surprising durability. Not that I’ve dropped it a dozen times, oh no. But I did once. On some rocks. In the mountains. And then it bounced into a small pool of water (we were by a huge waterfall). I immediately fished it out and went into panic mode drying it, blowing water out of the button cracks, shaking it and doing everything possible to get it free of water. Opened the back to dry the batteries and the memory card. At first all seemed well. I even managed to take another picture. Then a moment later, it wigged out. Buttons didn’t work. It said the memory card was full. I freaked. I thought we were not only going to lose all the pictures but that I’d trashed my dad’s camera. Awesome.
But I left it out to dry overnight and the next day it seemed to respond. A bit. However it kept saying that the memory card was full. Even after I deleted a few pictures from it. I prayed it was just the memory card glitching. Turns out it was. When I bought a new Sandisk 4 GB memory card (which is waterproof, by the way), the camera went right back to normal. It takes pictures just like before, all the buttons respond, and all is well. Thank you Canon for making a camera good enough to survive a crack on some rocks and a dip in some mountain water, and for saving me from having to buy a brand new digital camera.
If you need a good digital camera with a nice array of options, quality photos, and some impressive resilience, then this is definitely one little camera you should look into.
NT
