Let me start by saying I’ve returned the Canon Powershot A590IS already. The main reason was because the wife wanted to go back to something smaller aka a subcompact camera. I had to agree with her there after a few days of using the camera.

Second, she did not like the recharge time between flash pictures. I didn’t time it, but it seemed like at least 5 or 6 seconds. I guess that’s fairly typical of cameras with 2 AA batteries.

The subcompact we had before (Canon SD600) seemed a lot better in this regard. It used a proprietary lithium rechargeable battery though.

My beef with the Canon A590IS was that the video wasn’t as good as our previous SD600 camera. And I guess the specs don’t lie because they state 20 fps for 640×480 video instead of 30 fps with most other Canon digital cameras. The IS seemed like it made the video more stable, but it also made panning with the camera more choppy. It wasn’t a huge beef as I don’t take a lot of video with a digital camera, but it was annoying they made the video worse.

I also thought the construction was a bit cheap with the shell of the camera being plastic instead of metal. The zoom lever seemed a bit cheap too.

Now the good. I like the dial on the A590IS. It lets you quickly select a shooting mode. Very handy. On a subcompact you have to select modes through the menus at least on the old Canon we had. The picture quality on this powershot seem fairly nice. I wouldn’t say they were better than our previous camera, but certainly I didn’t notice they were that much worse either. The fact it uses AA batteries is convenient because AA batteries are everywhere and the access to the batteries, memory card and ports are easier to work with. (It’s not as tiny as on a subcompact.) And this camera has lots of manual settings.

Ultimately though the camera wasn’t as sleek and small as the subcompact we had before. It didn’t take as nice of video and it seemed slower in between pictures specifically flash pictures.T he only advantage to this one over a ~$200 Canon subcompact would seem to be the convenience of AA batteries and a slightly greater zoom although perhaps some would find a larger camera easier to hold.