Overview
The Canon IXUS IIs is a sleek, stylish digital camera. It has 3.2 megapixels and a 2x optical zoom lens. It will slip into a decent sized pocket or a bag, so you can carry it with you wherever you go, so that it is always on hand for a photo opportunity.
It is aimed at anyone who is looking for a straightforward digital camera that not only takes good pictures, but looks good too. To get started with the Canon IXUS IIs all you need to do is charge up the battery, load it into the camera along with the memory card and you are ready to go.
Image Quality
As with just about all Canon digital cameras you won't have any complaints about the image quality. The colours are faithfully reproduced and the images are sharp. The Canon IXUS IIs performs well in tricky lighting conditions such as indoors at night as long as you keep in mind the limitations of the built in flash.
Close up photography is good too, but the macro facility only lets you get as near as 10cms where as many of its competitors let you get within 5cms.
Features
For the social photographer the Canon IXUS IIs has just about all the features they will need.
Starting off with a couple of negative points though, the optical zoom lens is only 2x, whereas you might have expected a 3x zoom lens. On top of this, for close up photography, the macro range is 10cms. A number of its rivals can get in as close as 5cms. I wonder what the cost would have been of producing this digital camera with a 3x optical zoom lens and a macro facility that was able to focus at 5cms. I guess you can't always have everything that you would like.
Anyway that is the complaints out of the way. The LCD screen is 1.5 inches in size. The feature I like here is that you can adjust the brightness of the LCD screen. This is particularly important in bright or low light conditions where with other cameras it can be difficult to see what is displayed on the screen.
There is a built in flash with a range of two meters. That is a fairly standard range and it is important not to expect too much of the flash capabilities of any digital camera. The flash also has red eye reduction.
You can shoot short movies of up to three minutes. The movies are in colour and have sound. You can also add voice memos of up to a minute to still images. This just helps a little with recording each memory.
To place yourself in the picture there is a self timer. The time delay can be set to either two or ten seconds.
Effects can be added to each picture if you are looking for something different. The available effects are black and white, sepia, low sharpening, neutral and vivid colour.
For anyone who doesn't wish to use a computer or who would like to speed up the process of printing photos the camera is PictBridge compatible. This means that if you have a printer that is also PictBridge compatible you can link the camera directly to the printer to print your images.
There are a few more advanced functions as well. These include being able to use white balance settings. There are settings for different light conditions of daylight, cloudy, tungsten, fluorescent and fluorescent H. There is also a custom setting. If you have no wish to use the white balance settings the camera will select what it considers to be the correct setting automatically.
As well as white balance you have access to exposure compensation controls, ISO speed equivalents and three metering modes, evaluative, centre-weighted average and spot/ centre.
There is a continuous shooting mode that lets you take up to twelve images in one go at a rate of just over two frames per second.
Ease of Use
There is nothing too demanding about using the Canon IXUS IIs. The controls are well laid out on the back of the camera and the menus that are used to control the camera's main functions are easy to get to grips with. Too be honest the camera isn't overloaded with features compared with some of its rivals and this can also help to make the camera easy to use and understand.
You can start taking pictures straight away, once the battery is charged and loaded along with the memory card and although the camera does have some extra functions that give you the ability to get the most out of each shot it doesn't take long to pick them up as you go along.
Cost
You should be able to pick up a Canon IXUS IIs for around £200-220. There are cheaper competitors out there, but you are paying for that little extra quality that Canon provide.
Style
This camera is all about style. It is sleek and shiny and can be carried just about everywhere with you. It has a metal outer casing and its overall build quality is impressive. It weighs in at 165g which should place too much of a strain on anybody.
Batteries / Memory Cards
The Canon IXUS IIs uses a rechargeable Li-ion Battery the NB-3L. A charger is supplied with the camera. As with most things in life there are pros and cons of a digital camera using this type of battery. The main advantage is that it will take more shots before the battery becomes depleted and needs to be recharged. The downside is that it can run out at just the wrong moment, for example just after the bridge and groom have emerged from the church. Therefore you will either need to pay out for a spare battery, which can be quite expensive or you need to ensure that the battery is kept charged up and ready for use.
To store images Secure Digital (SD) Cards are used. The one supplied with the camera is 16mb. For a 3.2 megapixel digital camera that is less than generous and it will soon fill up. Therefore you need to make sure that you include an extra, much larger, SD card in your budget.
Conclusion
There's not much wrong with the Canon IXUS IIs. It is a fairly standard digital camera and fits into the Canon IXUS range between the IXUS I, which doesn't have an optical zoom lens and the four megapixel IXUS 430. Whilst there isn't anything to really reach out and grab you and say buy me above the others, if it fits in with your budget then it is worth adding to your shortlist.
Click for: Specification
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