Canon PowerShot SD890IS 10MP Digital Camera with 5x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom: Customer Reviews & Product Details

It was finally time to replace our older Kodak Easy-share camera and thought the Canon SD890 was a good choice. I jumped on a sale that Amazon had and received it for $169 shipped.
After receiving it and trying it out for a weekend the only thing that my wife liked about it was its relatively small size, especially when compared to our older Kodak & the optical view finder.
The major issues for us were (1) the LCD screen was EXTREMELY grainy; (2) the controls were difficult to access; (3) long lag time (but the SD890 is not alone on this one); and (4) it was very hard to hold onto to. My wife said it literally slipped out of her hands on several occasions.
After all was said and done, it simply was not a camera for us and so we returned it Amazon.
We are still looking for a camera to replace our Kodak Easy-share and the one thing we know is that it won't be the Canon SD980IS.

I'm a long-term, satisfied DSLR user (at the moment, Nikon D200) but I take it along only when I am planning on doing serious photography. I wanted a point&shoot that would be easy to carry. So based on a friend's very satisfactory experience, I bought a Canon G10 --- this is a nice, portable supplement to the D200; moreover it has a hot shoe so that one can do flash photographs with bounced light. I recommend the G10 strongly, but a camera of this price/quality should not just be shoved into a pants pocket without a protective cover of some sort, so for me it was still a bit too bulky to be the "always have it along" camera.
Then in July of 2009 Amazon sent me one of those morning e-mails with an attractive, bargain-price ($169)offer for the Canon PowerShot SD890IS. I perused the user reviews and also looked it it up on several websites that review digital cameras before ordering it from Amazon. It arrived promptly.
The SD890IS meets my need for a compact, easy-to-carry camera. Other reviews here on Amazon have pointed out the minor issues (e.g. the less-than-assertive on-off switch) but none of these have diminished my satisfaction with the camera. I bought an after-market back-up Lithium Ion battery (Lenmar, $10) that seems to work about as well as the battery that came with the camera.
I'm happy with my purchase.

I just purchased and love this camera - easy to use, great pictures, great interfacing with both my home Mac Os and my work Windows vista. Just buy a larger memory card right away it comes with a very small card. Small light and easy!! Thanks Canon!!!

This Canon PowerShot is everything it claims to be. Perfect size, quality photos, long lasting battery life, and easy to use. It's the best camera I've owned for a long time for this type of money. Great buy and I highly recommend!

I bought this Canon camera after looking at a number of competitors in the same range of quality. I have not been disappointed with the results. The 10 meg picture quality is very good and I really have no need for higher resolution since I no longer print pictures at home. I have had some printed on line through both Walgreen's and Shutterfly. Both services report I could print well over the 8 by 10 print sizes I have had done. The print quality in both 5 by 7 and 8 by 10 are equal. The Image stability seems to work well since I have taken a lot fewer blurry pictures with this camera.

The camera has a nice feel and the shape makes it easy to hold. I prefer using a view finder so the capability to turn off the view screen played a big part in my choice. Camera came with a nice "printed" instruction book besides the stuff on the included cd. books seem to pretty rare these days with electronic cameras. The camera does take some learning and having an instruction with you in the field can't be understated. I am sure once the camera is fully learned the book wont seem as important. I do usually travel with more than one camera so this certainly helps me.

I am very satisfied with the battery life and picture capacity. I bought a spare battery and two Transcend 4 GB SDHC cards when I bought the camera.

My only gripe about the camera is the Power on/off button. Not only is it hard to operate correctly it seems to take a while for the camera to turn on. Fortunately there is an alternate way to power up the camera so I find I use the Power button mostly to turn the camera off.

This camera was on sale when I bought it and a newer version was also available. However, newer versions are removing the view finder feature so I chose this model.