Nice little camera (Canon Digital Ixus)

Member Name: danielfinn

Product:	Canon Digital Ixus
Date:	22/07/04 (96 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use, Small (roughly same size as cigarette box), Decent picture quality

Disadvantages: Low battery life with screen on, Not good for action shots

The Canon Digital Ixus is a nice little toy indeed! This small silver camera is ideal for sticking into a handbag, putting in a pocket, or (if you can be bothered buying the case) hanging off your belt. Nice and small, easy to take out, can't be bad things for a camera, surely?

But what about the functions? The Canon Digital Ixus is a 2.1Mpixel camera, which is fairly decent as long as you're not expecting any pieces of art to come from it. It has a small LCD screen on the back to view the pictures you have taken, or act as a viewfinder. It also has a viewfinder so you don't have to use the screen if you don't like it, and can opt for the traditional hold-the-camera-to-your-eye and snap away.

As well as this, it comes with the things that are necessary, such as timer, automatic flash, and all that malarky, as well as a 3x optical zoom and a 2x digital zoom. The digital zoom is not much use in my opinion, as a computer can make much better use of zooming into a photo, and it's not very easy to move the picture around while it is being viewed from the camera.

On addition, the camera comes bundled with a camera-USB cable, enabling you to simply plug your camera into a computer and download the pictures straight off. It also comes with all necessary software, which include a photoviewer, editor and something called photostitch, where you can take multiple photos (also a function of the camera, in case i forget) and 'stitch' them together to make a long panormic photo.

Overall, I've had very few problems with this camera. However, the battery life does not last very long if the display screen is on all the time. I estimate that you could probably leave the camera on for about 3 hours (continuous) with the display screen on, but it could easily last you a whole day without. To charge it only takes a few hours, and is simple enough, just remove the rechargable battery and stick it in the charger. One ot
her problem is that, like a lot of cameras, it can not cope with fast moving objects, which appear as a blur, so it is best to keep the camera still when snapping.

Overall a nice buy, but with so many different versions of the Ixus out now, many with improved resolution, memory and battery life, it may be worth splashing out and getting a better one. However, for those strapped with cash that REALLY want a digital camera, you may as well go for this, it does everything a camera does and in a pretty simple way, producing good quality snaps whatever the conditions.

Summary: