I’ve always liked the Canon range of IXUS* pocket cameras, ever since I bought the first, and to my way of thinking, best built model, finished as it was in a hefty satin stainless steel case with just a touch of black plastic around the lens. I guess you’d call this the IXUS 1, except back then it wasn’t numbered, it was THE IXUS.

Over a 6-year period it has served us well, except for a failure during its guarantee period, which was fixed free-of-charge. However, only last week while on holiday in Portugal, it developed the same fault, which given its age, I’m forced to conclude will be an un-economic repair.

Since its original inception, the IXUS has kept up with the times – the version II APS camera was a cosmetically revised effort with a few extra features. Then the digital revolution took hold, and Canon were quick to exploit the IXUS’s dinky looks and solid gold build quality, by turning out the first Digital IXUS, and all credit to them, in the same dimensions at the APS film version.

This is where the new Canon IXUS 400 comes in.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

This really is a return to ‘dinky-ness’ which some of the other IXUS’s, (or is that IXII?) were creeping away from, millimetre-by-millimetre. My daughter’s older IXUS V3 feels quite thick compared to a ‘celluloid’ cousin, but this 400 is a little beauty with the emphasis on the ‘little’. One minor bonus here – I get to use the quality leather case from the old IXUS -, aye lad, them were’t’ days when yer got a PROPER case wi’ it.

Personally, I’m not impressed with digital zooms, since they are not really zooms at all, and achieve nothing that you couldn’t do ‘back at the ranch’ with your chosen graphics package. At least if you do a selective print later, from the centre of a picture let’s say, you haven’t compromised the actual picture content, whereas, if you use the digital zoom on the camera, the rest of the picture, which you might later decide you really wanted is lost forever. Stick to the optical zoom is my advice.

Annoyingly, the IXUS doesn’t give you a fuel-gauge type display to show you battery life. I t holds off from telling you anything until you’re nearly out of ‘juice’ – I’ve seen it opined elsewhere, that this is a fiendish Canon plot to get you to buy a spare battery. Unlike my Nikon, which will also run on 2CR5 throwaway batteries, the Canon will only run on its unique-fit Lithium-Ion batteries, and not for too long, it would seem.

Camera makers will insist of showing battery life as a total of shots - what they fail to mention is over how long a period. There’s no point in telling me that I’m good for 500 photos, if the battery will only stand up for 5 hours, even fully charged. The spontaneity for which digital cameras are famed is tarnished a bit when someone shouts ‘grab the camera, you never know who we'll meet’ only to find that you need to stay in for a couple of hours while the battery charges.

To kick off with, you’ll probably want to take some photos under the fully automatic mode. Quite literally, this involves turning the camera on, and pressing the shutter release. Canon do now seem to have (almost) licked the time lag problems encountered when trying to ‘snatch’ a shot – this camera boots up in about one second, which is a considerable improvement over my ‘big boy’s’ Nikon.

Pictures of Canon Digital IXUS 400

Waggon & Horses, A4 near Avebury, September 2003

AUTOMATIC - Even in fully automatic guise, you can still manipulate the flash gun in a carousel of options, ranging from not firing at all, through the ‘anti-redeye’ setting to ‘slo-sync’ which fires the flash in anti-redeye mode whilst also using a slower shutter speed to prevent the background from being almost completely blacked-out – a common problem with outdoor night shots. You can also access the closer focussing needed by macro mode here – this enables you to focus from within a couple of inches from the lens out to a foot or so.

PANORAMA - The panorama stitch mode is useful. Unlike a celluloid APS camera with its various format options, the digital camera’s screen format is strictly a TV-shaped 4:3 aspect ratio. However, you can take a panorama of several photos, which are later stitched together. The Canon has a useful little feature to help you get the overlapping of frames more or less right first time. After taking the left hand shot of the panorama, the viewfinder then shows the right hand portion of the previous shot in the left of the viewfinder. Because this is semi-transparent, this makes lining up the next shot very easy. You continue in this manner for several shots. These are all retained as single shots but earmarked as participants in a panorama for later processing by PC software.

Another good reason for not using the movie facility is that the sound is only steam mono, the picture definition in this case is limited to maximum of 320 lines definition, compared to 520 on the camcorder, and it only shoots 15 frames per second compared to 25 on the camcorder. Yes, it does shoot movies of a sort, limited to a three minute maximum, but just don’t expect to have much Compact Flash Module memory left for photos at the end of it!

CONNECTIVITY

In addition, the IXUS can also connect to a TV so that you can view your pictures as a slide show. This can be adjusted to PAL or NTSC output to suit which side of the Atlantic you happen to be on at the time.

Yes, its results are pretty damned good, and you have to look hard for any difference between its results, and those from my 5.0megapixel Nikon 5700, costing 2.5 times more. If anything, I prefer its colour rendition, but that’s purely subjective.

b) THE BOOS

If you’re looking for a snazzy, if slightly pricey (£347 at Amazon*) digital camera capable of damned-near top-flight results, that feels like it’s well-built (it is, by the way), and that’s quite a lot smaller than a cigarette packet, then the IXUS range should be on your shopping list. Oh yes, it’s a doddle to use too.