Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2007/11/06/review_canon_ixus_860/
Canon Ixus 860 IS compact camera
Another hit from Canon?
Posted in Personal Tech, 6th November 2007 12:44 GMT
Review Behavioural scientists reckon that, within ten seconds of meeting someone for the first time, we’ve already decided whether we like them or not. Well, if the Canon Ixus 860 IS was a person, we would have liked them from the moment we first clapped eyes on them.
It’s a handsome thing, with smooth curves, a two-tone silver and black finish, and feels reassuringly solid in the hand. The rear of the camera is dominated by a large, 3in LCD screen composed of 230,000 pixels. Images displayed on the screen are sharp and clearly defined. On top of the body is a small slider button for selecting camera, scene or movie modes, a tiny power button and a zoom rocker control.
Canon's Ixus 860 IS: sexy beast
Around the back is the ubiquitous multi-function controller, along with buttons for playback, direct printing, menu selection and display mode. Hidden behind a (rather flimsy) plastic flap is a mini USB port and an AV socket, while underneath the camera is another flap, this time concealing the battery and SD card slots.
You get the usual assortment of accessories - connecting leads, battery charger, and PDF manual and software on a CD. Canon also throws in an SD card as the Ixus 860 has no internal memory. With memory prices so low these days, it was disappointing to find Canon providing a measly 32MB card, which will record just eight images at the highest resolution or 14 seconds of moving pictures.
The LCD's nice and big
When it comes to features, the 860 IS offers quite a lot. There’s an eight-megapixel CCD fed through a 3.8x optical zoom lens equivalent to 28-105mm on a 35mm camera, allowing users to pull in extra detail from the side. You also get a 4x digital zoom; shutter speeds from 15s to 1/1600 of a second; ISO ratings from 80 to 1600; a variety of shooting modes, including auto, manual (although not manual exposure), Stitch Assist, and scenes such as Night, Kids and Pets, Snow, Beach and Underwater. Of course, the last one of those should probably only be used in addition to the optional underwater protective cover...
Goodies include face-detection technology, an image-stabilisation system, audio and movie recording, plus a host of adjustments for image size, aspect ratio, colour and resolution. With its lithium-ion battery and SD card, the Ixus 860 weighs around 182g - not the lightest digital camera in town, but by no means the most corpulent.
Switch-on is fast, shutter lag small
Switch-on is fast and it's ready to start snapping within a second of powering up. Shutter lag isn’t too bad either, although sometimes the focus and face-detection systems can take a moment or two to settle down. Some functions, such as the macro setting, flash and self-timer, can be set by simply pressing the rocker control, but for most of them you need to navigate the on-screen menu system. Three tabbed menus are used to select various camera settings such as digital zoom, LCD brightness and shutter sound.
Press the function-set button in any of the various modes (camera/scene/movie) and you are presented with even more options. For instance, in Scene mode, there are options for adjusting the exposure compensation setting (from +2 in 1/3 stop increments), image resolution (from 3264 x 2448 to 640 x 480 pixels) and aspect ratio (widescreen 3264 x 1832).
Sample shots
We were impressed with the camera’s macro mode...
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...the fine detail on the leaves and the tree bark shows why
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The normal setting shows good colour and excellent depth of field
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The same image in widescreen mode; good for displaying images on a widescreen display
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The movie mode menu includes options for compressing the image size and using time lapse – one- or two-second intervals can be selected. Manual mode gives choices for adjusting exposure compensation, colours, white balance and metering (evaluative, centre weighted or spot). Tweakers will love the 860 IS, but for users who simply like to set their camera to auto, the camera will work well for most shooting situations.
Sample shots
The Ixus 860 copes well under low light conditions - this was shot in a backyard at night
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The auto-focus coped well, even with this image of birds behind a double layer of wire mesh
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So is the 860 IS' beauty only skin deep? Not a bit. Overall, we were very impressed. Picture quality - as you can see from the sample shots above - was superb: sharp, bright, detailed, with excellent contrast and colour. The auto-focus system worked well, even when presented with tricky situations like shooting through the fine mesh of a bird cage. Mind you, sometimes it needed to pause and scratch its head a bit before it was ready to go.
The face-detection system can lock on to nine faces at a time and was rarely fooled in our tests. Image stabilisation does help remove blurring when shooting with a long zoom, although to be honest, even when stablisation is switched off, the 860 IS is pretty forgiving when it comes to camera shake. The 28mm lens setting was ideal for landscape shots and the widescreen mode setting was great for viewing images on, yes, a widescreen TV.
We also liked the panoramic stitching feature, which lets you link up to 26 shots together to create super-wide images. It’s a simple system to use, and Canon also provides the software for stitching them on a PC screen.
Shots taken with the macro setting were also superb. One of our favourite program modes was Aquarium, great for taking snaps through glass. We were also pleasantly surprised by the digital zoom performance, which gave creditable results. The camera coped well under low-light shooting and the movie - VGA-quality (320 x 240) at 30fps - and sound recording - up to CD quality - modes were impressive.
Verdict
No camera is perfect, and Canon's Ixus 860 IS is no exception. We felt that the menu selection system was a little too sensitive at times: it was very easy to inadvertently make an adjustment we didn’t want – but a swine to revert back to the original setting. We also weren’t that keen on the zoom control, which is basically a small metal stub. The red-eye reduction system wasn’t great and still made many of our subjects look like extras in a horror movie. Canon says the battery is good for around 270 shots, but we found that around 200-220 was closer to reality. Still, we liked it. It looks smart, works well in most shooting situations and has a good selection of features.