CANON Digital IXUS 70 Digital Cameras

Last year marked the 10th anniversary of Canon's IXUS cameras. Though the line started with a film camera, the company's IXUS line of digital compacts still carries the IXUS moniker, prefixed by "Digital". Canon positions the IXUS 70 as a replacement for the IXUS 60, which also puts it below the IXUS 75 in the company's line. Resolution has been bumped up to 7.1 megapixels from the IXUS 60's 6MP, but despite an almost identical controls layout (though different cosmetic design), Canon made a few changes on the inside.

The most noticeable internal change is the switch to the new Digic III processor. Canon says it enables longer battery life, faster startup, autofocus, and shutter response (we call this shutter lag). Plus, the processor adds enough number-crunching power to add face detection, red-eye reduction (in playback mode), and lets the Canon Digital IXUS 70 battery reach further heights of sensitivity -- in this case ISO 1600. To Canon's credit, we did see some performance improvements over the IXUS 60 (see our performance paragraph below for more).



Canon are very well know for there cameras and always produce very good products. This is no exception and comes with lots of features. It is a 7.1 megapixel digital camera which means the pictures that it takes are very, very good quality. Personally I think that 5 megapixels is enough for taking photos but if you are planning on doing a lot of editing and zooming in on certain parts of photos then maybe 6 or 7 megapixels is more what you are after. This fits into the second category there so if you are looking to take photos to edit and want a well know name for a camera then this could be a good option for you. It has a new technology for taking photos of people and can detect and face on the screen and set itself up so you will get the best possible picture, I will go into more detail for this later on. It also has a red eye reduction feature in play-back mode.

The Canon Ixus 70 battery has a rather high asking price of £249 for a 7.1 mepapixel model, although shop around online and you should be able to get it for significantly less than this.

If you're after a small camera to carry with you most of the time, then it fits the bill, especially given its fast start up time. However, greasy finger marks will ruin its shine and you'll have to contend with the slightly over complicated menu systems.

Using the camera is fairly straightforward, simply switch it on and start taking photos, however, when you want to use some of the more advanced features of the camera it can becomes more complicated, due to some of the hidden functions (such as the sharpness, contrast, and saturation controls). Switching between the modes is easy thanks to the mode switch on the back of the CANON EOS-20D battery for ixus 70 camera and once you find all the options the camera becomes fairly easy to use, and it is fairly easy to use the more basic functions of the camera - for example it's easy to switch between the photo, video and playback modes.

One of the main, or the main, selling point for this is the Face Detect feature. This is the feature I mentioned earlier meaning that it sets itself up to take the best possible photo of a person. When taking a photo you just hold the shutter button half down and it will detect a person and set itself up CANON NB-4L battery. After this it will actually continue to track the person as they move so it doesn't mean you have to stand or sit still until the photo is taken. This feature is extremely useful for me because I take a lot of photos of myself when I am bored so it stops the flash from overpowering the photo and making me seem really, really pale. This feature along makes it worth the £170 or so that I spent on this camera.

Another one of the main features is the red eye reduction within the play back mode. This makes it possible to remove the red eye that has been caused by the flash. I have to admit though I would rather use a program on my computer to do this because I have more control over it then but this feature on the camera does work pretty well which adds on to the worth of this product. It can be annoying at times though when you don't get the right outcome but most of the time it does work pretty well.

Probably the biggest change from its predecessor is the new processor that is provided in it. This is the Digic III processor which is faster than the one in the older model of this camera. This processor enables longer kodak klic-7001 battery life, faster start-up, faster shutter speeds and faster auto focus. This also gives it the extra power to be able to use the new features that come with this camera. I don't have the older version so I cannot compare it so all I can tell you is what I have read about it and that it works and I haven't had the camera stop working yet.

Covering an equivalent range of 35mm to 105mm, with a maximum aperture range of f/2.8 to f/4.9, this camera's 3X optical zoom lens is on par with the competition. However, we saw very little coloured fringing in our test images, which leads us to believe it probably has higher quality glass than some compacts. The 2.5-inch LCD screen has a special coating intended to prevent glare, scratches, and fingerprints.

Performance was relatively speedy in our tests. The Digital IXUS 70 battery took 0.98 second to start up and capture its first JPEG. Subsequent JPEGs took 1.48 seconds between shots with the flash turned off and 2.44 seconds with the flash enabled. Shutter lag measured 0.45 second in our high-contrast test, which mimics bright shooting conditions, and 0.9 second in our low-contrast test, which mimics dim shooting conditions. Continuous shooting wasn't quite as fast as its 6MP predecessor. We measured approximately 1.7 frames per second regardless of image size. Canon's face detection system quickly and accurately detected most of the faces we tried. It seems to rely largely on eyes, as it got slightly confused when one of our lovely models closed hers.