Overview
The Canon IXUS 500 is a 5 megapixel digital camera with a 3x optical zoom lens. Its main, but certainly not only appeal is its stylish good looks. It is very sleek with a matt silver finish. It is small, lightweight and portable. You can take it with you wherever you go as it will slip into a pocket quite easily. The build quality of the Canon IXUS 500 is excellent for a camera in this price range. It is also very easy to use.
To get up and running and be able to start taking pictures all you need to do is take it out of the box, charge and load the batteries and load the memory card. Then you can turn it on and off you go.
Image Quality
It would be of little use if the Canon IXUS 500 looked good, but was unable to take good pictures. The camera comes with a high quality lens that is typical of Canon and therefore produces sharp images. Colours are vivid, in fact I believe that as a rule colours produced by Canon digital cameras are some of the best available.
Features
Outside of taking pictures in automatic mode the Canon IXUS 500 has a number of features that allow you to get a little more out of the camera.
If you like to use your digital camera to shoot short movies then the Canon IXUS 500 lets you to shoot movies of up to 3 minutes. The movies are in colour and are with sound.
For when you are taking pictures in challenging lighting conditions you can fine tune Exposure Compensation and White Balance. White Balance comes with seven different settings including auto, where the camera tries to optimise white balance itself.
Sensitivity can be varied between ISO 50 and 400. This is the equivalent of film speed on a traditional 35mm camera. In a nutshell ISO 50 is great for taking portraits on a sunny day, whilst ISO 400 captures action shots and shots where the lighting is poor.
There is a macro facility for close up work. This lets you take pictures from about six inches away from the subject of the photograph. This really comes into its own when you are taking photographs of objects such as flowers or food.
You can also add effects to your pictures. These include adding a sepia tinge or shooting the picture in black and white. Other effects available are vivid, neutral and low sharpening.
Resolution can be varied. You may wish to change the resolution and also the picture quality to save space on the memory card and to produce pictures that you can email or use on a website. For pictures that you may wish to print later it is advisable to use the highest resolution and the best picture quality setting as well.
For those of you who like to get into the picture yourselves there is a self timer option available. The self timer can be set to either 2 or 10 seconds.
The LCD screen is used to view the photographs that you have already taken. You can choose to view one picture at a time or to see nine small thumbnails. Being able to display the nine thumbnails is useful if you have a high capacity memory card full of images. There is also the facility to zoom into an image you are playing back to check the detail of a particular area. Voice memos of up to sixty seconds can be added for each picture after they have been taken.
There are three different types of metering available, evaluative, centre weighted average and spot. Evaluative is the default, but you can select one of the others through the menu system.
If you would like to experiment with night photography and a tripod the shutter speed can be varied. The longest exposure time available is 15 seconds.
Printing is made easier with a dedicated print button. The Canon IXUS 500 is also Pict Bridge compatible. This allows it to send prints directly to a Pict Bridge compatible printer without the need to use a computer.
Ease of Use
There should be no complaints when it comes to ease of use. The Canon IXUS 500 has a fully automatic mode that allows you to just turn the camera on and start taking photographs. If you wish to switch to movie mode and shoot a short movie then you can do this just by turning a dial. To playback your images on the LCD screen all you need to do is push a slider along. It is fairly simple to adjust the White Balance and Exposure Compensation settings through the function screen if you wish to do so.
Cost
If you shop around you should be able to find the Canon IXUS 500 for around £315.
Style
The main selling point of the Canon IXUS 500 is undoubtedly style. Its sleek design will appeal to people who like to own cameras that get noticed almost as much as the pictures it takes. In my view there are some trade offs that need to be recognized when compared to shall we say less pretty digital cameras. For a start style comes at a price, so expect to pay a premium. The fact that the camera will slide into your pocket may be a big plus point, but it also means that the controls and buttons are also downsized. Just as important the LCD screen is only 1.5". A little on the small size for my own personal liking. Other cameras also offer scene modes to help you take the best possible pictures in different lighting situations. Again these are missing from this range.
Battery and Memory Cards
Power is supplied to the Canon IXUS 500 through a rechargeable Lithium Ion battery. It is the only type of battery that the camera will use and you would therefore be wise to consider buying a spare battery for when the one supplied with the camera is being recharged. To recharge a completely flat battery takes around two hours. As with all digital cameras you need to keep an eye on battery consumption, but the Canon IXUS 500 will take around 200 shots before the battery needs recharging. That should suit most users of this type of camera.
Compact Flash cards are used to store images. Taking images as large as 5 megapixels will soon fill up the 32mb memory card supplied with the camera. Fortunately the price of memory cards continues to fall as the capacity of digital cameras grows. Therefore it is well worth considering buying an additional high capacity card. Otherwise you will be spending as much time storing your images on a computer as you will be taking photographs. I would suggest that 128mb as a minimum, but if you can afford a 512mb card then you should have plenty of capacity.
Conclusion
If style means a lot to you then the Canon IXUS 500 certainly looks the part. It is more than just its good looks that gets it noticed and its ease of use will appeal to anyone who wants to take good quality pictures without needing to wade through a manual the size of an encyclopedia. The Canon IXUS 500 is about as straightforward as they come. If you are looking for a slightly cheaper option then you should also consider the IXUS 430. This is more or less the same camera but it has 4 megapixels compared to this ones 5 megapixels. Click for: Specification
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Related Pages
Canon IXUS 500 Review Canon IXUS 500 Specification Canon IXUS 500 Sample Images
