Canon IXUS X-1 Compact Camera

The blurb for this camera announces "outstandingly designed" and for once it isn't just hyperbole. It's lightweight and small enough to take anywhere without inconvenience, it can be immersed in water, sand, snow, mud or beer with no ill-effects, it's easy to use even if you have gloves and goggles on, and it comes without the social stigma of a canary yellow case. There is no doubt that some serious thought has gone into this camera, it really is designed to be used in places where you would not normally be taking your camera along.

How it works:
The Japanese genius responsible for this design (bless his chopsticks) has cunningly located the film and battery access points in a waterproof compartment. The whole of the bottom of the camera (the black bit on the picture) is a hinged door, which can be opened up to change film over or access the fiddly little buttons to set the camera time/date/text annotation options.

Nice features:
The shutter release button is huge - easy to hit with cold and/or gloved fingers.
The operation mode knob is knurled and also easy to operate with gloved fingers.
The film rewind button is recessed into the top of the camera and I have never operated this by mistake.
The spring-loaded knob for opening the waterproof film loading compartment is similarly impossible to open accidentally.
The viewfinder is nice and big, you can see what you are photographing no problem through a diving mask or ski goggles.
Lightweight (220g) and small (105x75x47mm)

The numbers:
On the technical side, the camera has a 23mm/f4.8 lens, and features 5 focus options, including an "underwater macro" option, which allows you to focus on objects as close as 45cm from the camera. This is great for underwater pictures where the visibility is less than perfect and you need to get as close as possible to the subject to catch it's true colours. There is also a "slow syncro" option, letting you take photos with no flash in low light conditions - sunset pictures for example.

The pictures:
The first thing I will say here is that this camera allows you to take pictures that you can't take with other cameras. White water rafting, snorkelling, pictures from behind waterfalls, pictures in the rain, pictures in the snow, on windy days at the beach, in the pool… You get the picture (pun!)
Unfortunately, you do lose out on the picture quality - it isn't 35mm film and the images are not as sharp as you would get with a good quality 35mm camera, especially in panorama mode where the print is enlarged more from the negative. I didn't think this would be a problem but it is definitely noticeable.
Also, although the APS format provided a great alternative to 35mm when it first came out, it is nowhere close to giving the same flexibility as a digital camera in terms of cropping and resizing images.

Negative points:
"Tough and robust" it may be, but I did eventually manage to break mine, something shaking loose inside leaving all my photos half-in and half-out of focus. This was repaired by Canon but cost almost as much as a new camera would have done.

Summary:
I think if I were to buy a new camera now I would wait until a digital waterproof version was released. Waterproof cameras are great, and I do not regret buying this one, but I think the limitations of APS compared to digital would make this product a poor choice as soon as a good digital alternative hits the market.