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Reviewed by UK Guest, 16th Apr 2007. |
| Review Summary: IXUS 850 is - Serious WOW Factor |
Overall Score: 5/5
 
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Review: I wanted a compact digital camera offering quality lens, ease of use, wide angle capability, Image stabilisation and above all good picture quality with enough pixels to allow cropping and enlarged picture size of 16x12 inches.
Research boiled down to two contenders, Panasonic FX50 (just replaced with their new FX30 range) and the Canon Ixus 850 IS. Of all the reviews I read I could find little to choose between them so made a trip to the local shop to see first hand. Whilst I liked the 3 inch viewing screen and Leica lens on the FX50 my personal preference was for the Ixus as I found it easier to hold and having previously owned an Ixus 400 was marginally biased in that direction. Holding the 850 just confirmed my choice.
Chose AllCam to supply because of their near 100% customer satisfaction record (and a very good price to boot), ordered on Tuesday after the Easter Bank Hol and received in the Isle of Man on Friday morning all intact and raring to go - AllCam's service was very good indeed and they kept me informed of order progress by email each step of the way.
Initial impression is that of a very smart, stylish camera, well made with a solid feel about it. The camera will work straight from the box in auto mode, point, press, shoot and forget if that is what you want but it also does an awful lot more.
Charged the battery and slipped in a 1Gb SD card and I was away. The start up time from switch on is very vey quick as is the time lag between pressing shutter button and picture being taken - a huge improvement on the Ixus 400 which used to annoy intensely. Focussing is also very quick and that face recognition thingi is spooky to say the least but very useful.
Over the weekend I really put the camera through its 7 Mega pix paces, almost abused it with what I was asking it to do. The effective 28mm wide angle lense was so refreshing after the industry standard 35mm and the 3.8:1 optical zoom ratio gave a decent long rang as well. The smart digital zoom was a very useful feature to have for occasional use and even at 15x zoom the noise on the picture was acceptable paricularly in daylight shots. The macro facility was very easy to use and gave some amazing shots of the inside of flowers. The 'professional' technical reviews I read mentioned some distortion at 28mm wide angle, well they may be right, but it is absolutely minimul so much so that I doubt the vast majority of users would even notice.
Let me bung my criticisms in here - On my Ixus 400 I was able to set the 'manual' mode focus to default to centre spot focussing leaving the 'auto' mode to get an average from its 9 point fucussing system. Can't do that on the 850 and could only get the centre spot focussing by changing it via the menu settings which then effected both the auto and manual modes together. To be able to flick between 9 point focussing and central screen focussing is vey useful on occasion and I could not do it on the 850. The only other thing that peeved me was there was a slight tendency to pick up some red eye when using flash, nowhere near as bad as the Ixus 400 but still there - I could live with this though, no worries.
That said I was seriously struggling to find anything show stopping to critisise about the 850. Pictures were very sharp, colours vibrant and bold (I used to like Agfa colour film as opposed to Kodak and for those of us who remember Agfa was very strong on reds and blues) the immage stabilisation really worked, the layout on the rear of the camera leant itself to holding the camera easily without pressing the wrong buttons. Even the recessed on/off button had been thought about. The 2.5 in screen was very clear and easy to use. The rotary mode control was also much improved on the Ixus 400 (which was easy to accidently change).
Evening shots were simple without flash, noise (grain) was not particularly evident even in quite a dark room and the AE was so effective most of my indoor pictures were better without flash that with when doing a direct comparison.
Battery life was excellent, I hammered the camera on Saturday, took about 100 pics, used the flash quite a bit, zoomed in and out with impunity and spent a long while looking at the results of my endeavours on the screen and still it was not showing any low battery level warnings. Put another way for most people I suspect that one charge will be all you will need for a whole day and nights snapping without the need to consider buying a second battery to keep in reserve.
To summarise, this is a cracking little camera that looks the part as well. Would I recomment it - yes I would. Is it worth the asking price of 224 squids - In my opinion, yes it is. Am I glad I bought it - too right I am.
This is a very nice camera that has come of age and until Canon bring out a similar wide angle lense on a 10 Mega Pixel offering with Image stabilisation (neither of which the Ixus 900 has) then this takes some beating. Go for it, I would be very surprised indeed if you were disappointed.
Bruce |
Ratings
| Value For Money: |
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5 |
| Review Score: |
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5 |
| Recommended? | |
Yes |
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Digital Cameras