Photos: Hands-on with the Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS

For many people, compact cameras start and end with IXUS. An occupational hazard of our obsessive quest to bring you the latest gadgets is that people are always grabbing us in the office, stopping us on public transport and rousting us out of whatever hedge we slept in to ask us for advice. On the camera-buying front, the IXUS name always crops up, and with good reason: Canon leads the market and is a byword for image quality, with the 14.7-megapixel Canon IXUS 980 IS sitting proudly at the top of the range.

This Craver happily acknowledges the quality of every IXUS. They're certainly popular: recently, the BBC's top geek Rory Cellan-Jones asked for opinions on Twitter and Canon edged out Panasonic's Lumix brand. But just how good is IXUS in the context of the whole compact market? We took a look at the 980 to see how it holds up against the traditional brands such as Nikon and Kodak, and the johnny-come-lately all-rounders such as Samsung, Casio and Panasonic.

We're particularly keen to see whether the 980 stands up to this Craver's current favourite compact, the Panasonic Lumix FX500. Click through the images in our flashy new photo gallery to see the 980's bits and bumps.