Overview
The Canon IXUS i Zoom offers something a little different. It is an ultra compact digital camera, but with a strong emphasis on style. Although it is not overburdened with features it is capable of handling all the standard photos you are likely to come across in general social situations.
The IXUS i Zoom is a five megapixel digital camera with a 2.4 times optical zoom lens. It is likely to appeal to someone who is looking for a simple point and shoot model and is prepared to pay a bit more for superior build quality and an eye catching design.
Image Quality
Considering its size the IXUS i Zoom produced an impressive set of images. As is typical of ultra compact digital cameras I don't feel the images are quite as sharp as those produced by other five megapixel digital cameras such as the Canon Powershot A610, but they are still of a high quality nonetheless.
Running through the test pictures you will soon see that this camera is not all about style and can hold its own against many other more standard models. For example the IXUS i Zoom came up with surprisingly high quality indoor and macro shots. Starting with the indoors shots both the portrait and the shot of beer bottles are nice and bright and also sharply focused considering the conditions. The beer bottle photo is taken in more or less complete darkness and highlights the camera's ability to work well in lowlight situations. The portrait shot compares well against the portrait shots taken with other digital cameras. There is plenty of detail in the darker areas with the hair showing up clearly. The only area where the camera may have done better is with the touch of red eye that shows up in the shot.
The macro shot is another that stands up well against the competition. The camera shows an excellent level of detail. There is also a very high degree of brightness and clarity to the shot. This means that you should be able to take a variety of close up shots and produce pleasing photos.
In the colour test the camera performed just about exactly as I expected it to. The colours are very strong especially blue. If anything the blue may just tip over into being a touch too vivid, although you may like the look it gives to skies in landscape style shots. I have reviewed a number of the latest Canon digitals recently and they have all produced just about an identical colour test photo.
Outdoor scenic photos come out well too. Here the strong colours play a part and your photos will not lack for striking, deep colours. Contrasting light and dark areas of each photo are handled fairly well too.
The final test is an outdoor portrait. I have used flash to take the picture as this gives the photo a touch of added warmth at this time of the year. Some cameras produce too much flash in this situation leaving you with an overexposed shot that takes away a lot of detail. The IXUS i Zoom gets the flash level more or less spot on.
In terms of picture quality I am very happy with the results. There is more to this camera than simply looking good.
Shutter Lag and Recycling Times
The IXUS i Zoom managed to take a single shot in 1.78 seconds. This is a very slow time. To be honest I would have liked to have seen a much faster time. It took 14.55 seconds to take five consecutive shots. This works out at a rate of one photo more or less every 2.91 seconds. This is an average time.
The time taken to take a single photo is obviously a cause of concern. If you are planning to take photos of buildings and other features that remain still this will not be a problem. If you are planning to take pictures of anything that moves on a regular basis this is a very serious defect.
You can compare this camera to other models by taking a look at the Shutter Lag Comparison Table.
Features
The 2.4x optical zoom lens has a focal length equivalent to 38 - 90mm in 35mm format. The maximum f number of the lens is f/3.2 - f/5.4. For close up photography there is a macro mode that lets you get in as close as 10cms to your subject. There is also a 4x digital zoom.
For composing photos there is a 1.8" LCD screen. This is made up of around 118,000 pixels. You can adjust the brightness of the LCD screen. This can come in useful in bright light and also lowlight. There is no viewfinder.
The built in flash unit has a range of 2m. This is very limited and you need to be aware that the impact of the flash soon falls away. When the zoom lens is in use the flash range is even smaller at just 1.3m. To boost the flash you can consider buying Canon's High Power Flash (HF-DC1). The flash modes available are automatic, always on and always off. Both red eye reduction and slow sync are available too.
As well as fully automatic mode there are a number of preset scene modes available. These help you to take the best possible photo for a range of different photo opportunities. The scene modes are: Portrait, Landscape, Night Snapshot, Foliage, Snow, Beach, Fireworks, Indoor, Underwater and Kids and Pets. All you need to do is select the scene that matches the photo you are about to take. Stitch assist is also available to help you put together panoramic photos.
There are also a number of photo effects you can use. These are for Vivid, Neutral, Low Sharpening, Sepia, Black and White. Canon also have a My Colours setting. This lets you experiment with different colour effects such as swapping two colours over and highlighting one colour with the remainder of the shot in black and white.
To help preserve memories you can add up to 60 seconds of voice memo to a still image. When you would like to appear in the photo yourself there is a self timer. The self timer has three delay settings. These are two seconds, ten seconds and a custom setting. The custom setting lets you select a delay time between one and thirty seconds. You can also specify up to ten photos to be taken.
You can record short movies as well. You can choose between a resolution of 640 x 480 and a speed of 10 frames per second or 320 x 240 with a speed of 20 frames per second. You can record up to 1gb of footage. You can also shoot short movies at a resolution of 160 x120. These can be recorded at a speed of 15 frames per second for up to three minutes.
There are a number of more advanced controls too. These include three types of metering (Evaluative, Centre-weighted average and Spot), exposure compensation (+/- 2 EV in 1/3 stop increments), shutter speeds between 15 seconds and 1/1600 seconds and white balance settings for Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent and Fluorescent H. There is also a Custom white balance setting.
A continuous shooting feature lets you take photos at a maximum rate of 1.8 frames per second. The number of continuous shots you can take is only limited by the size of the memory card.
Canon provides all the necessary cables and software to connect the IXUS i Zoom to a PictBridge compatible printer, television set and a computer.
A couple of accessories you may be interested in are a weatherproof case (AW-DC40) and also a remote control unit (WL-DC200).
Ease of Use
In terms of features this is a fairly straightforward digital camera. There are not many areas where you can get totally lost and it is easy enough to find your way around. There are minimal buttons on the back of the camera. Those that are there control flash, zoom, self timer and accessing the menu system. There is also a slider allowing you to select, still photo, review images already taken and movie mode. The menu system is not too hard to work out although having a separate function button might cause a small amount of confusion.
Cost
You can pick up a Canon IXUS i Zoom for around £200. This compares to around £160 zoom for a Olympus Mini Digital S, £200 for a Fuji Finepix Z1 and £175 for a Pentax Optio S5z.
It is very difficult to find other digital cameras to compare this camera with. There are plenty of ultra compact digital cameras out there, but few have the extra style of the IXUS i Zoom. The only camera I can think of that comes close is the Olympus Mini Digital S. This camera is more expensive than the Mini Digital S although in time I expect this camera to fall in price to come closer to the Olympus model.
Style
The biggest attraction of this camera is its style and design. It is certainly one of the most sleek and eye catching cameras on the market. It comes in four colours champagne, black, red and purple. It is smaller even then a standard ultra compact camera with dimensions of 96.1 x 45.1 x 23.9 mm. It is also extremely lightweight weighing in at just 105g. The body is made out of stainless steel. This gives it a very shiny finish.
Batteries and Memory Cards
A rechargeable lithium ion battery is used to power the camera. Canon supplies both the battery and a charger with the camera. In Canon's own tests they were able to take up to 160 shots before the battery needed to be recharged.
Images are stored on SD cards. A 16mb card is supplied as standard. I was able to take 11 shots before the card became full. This was using the camera's default settings. It is therefore advisable to pick up a high capacity card to go with the camera.
Click here to save money on SD cards.
Points I like:
Style and design
Build quality
Where it is not so hot:
Shutter lag
Very limited flash range
Summary
The Canon IXUS i Zoom is a stylish digital camera that takes good photos. There is a clear issue with shutter lag although this may be overlooked if you are particularly style conscious. There are very few similar models around to give you any real choice and the IXUS i Zoom almost has the field to itself.
Canon IXUS i Zoom Front View
Canon IXUS i zoom Back View
Canon IXUS i zoom Top View
Sample Menus
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