Canon IXUS 970 IS Digital Camera

There are hundreds of reviews about it online but nothing about the things that matter, things that a pro or semi-pro look for in a digital camera, hope you find this useful =)

I've just got this camera (less than 6 hours ago) and I'm in love with it :-)

Image quality: very good, not as good as my dslr of course at 1:1.

Exposure: excellent, spot on, sometimes it may loose some detail from very bright highlight areas but the overall exposure it's not overexposed, the face detection works in certain modes to ensure the face was correct exposed, I need to dig more into that feature.
in bad lighting it doesn't perform so well.

Focusing: tiny funny noise but I thing I'll get used to, good speed, fast like other high end compacts.

Start-up: fast, not as bad as I expected for the lens to come out, I've seen a review where it says 1 sec. to start-up I think.

Power button: very small, biggest down point of this camera, I find it difficult to use but if you have small fingers it may be fine for you.

Design: different, to me it looks like they have designed it to be used efficiently with one hand only, when I grab it from my pocket and hold it with my right hand it fells comfortable, the curved shape make it easier to identify the right way and I can press the small power button with my thumb while the lens comes out between my index and middle finger.

Video & Sound: as good as it can get for a small compact.

Auto ISO: very good, the higher than I've recorded was 320
Auto ISO HIGH: too much noise above 400, at least if you use the other mode "Auto ISO" it will keep the ISO low.

ISO 3200: not usable, as bad as my old Sony Ericsson phone, it only works with 2mp (I think)

Viewfinder: too small, better than no viewfinder :)

LCD screen: good size, no need to be bigger and compromise battery life, great resolution, same as dslr's

Lens & Zoom: best in it's range, no other ultra compact from canon has a 5x zoom and many start at 28mm, this one starts at 35mm all the way to whooping 185mm*

Function button, gives you a choice of assign a feature from a small list to the print button, very useful

Manual mode: it's not full manual but gives many options that are very useful, fixed ISO, continuous shooting (well it only works in this mode anyway) no aperture or shutter control.

Long shutter speed: from 1sec. to 15sec. gives you some control over the shutter speed, I bet you won't find where this is without reading the manual, that's because you need to go to the exposure compensation to find it :-)

IS: image stabilization, nice feature, first time I'm using and I like it, seems to help a lot, it also have a panning option for up and down only, great for cars and airshows :-)

Face detection: works well, interesting feature, I need to use it more so I can say more about it, fun to use the thing that track it down the face when it moves.

Macro: (the reason why I bought a compact) great, min. focusing 2cm in wide @ 35mm, does not work @ 185mm ( zoomed out 5x)

Digital zoom: not bad, there is something called safety zoom that helps not to deteriorate the image quality by reducing the full output in mega pixels in the photo, Canon calls it digital tele-converter, needs more digging into it.

Display menu: great, shows histogram (not live histogram, I think that the DIGIC 4 has it) shows all you need to know plus it has something called focus check, great too, shows the AF point and a enlarged portion of the image, two small thumbnails side by side