Canon Ixus 300 HS

UPDATE 07/07/2011: In line with our new, tighter test criteria, the Canon Ixus 300 HS is now a three-star camera rather than a four-star camera. Its low-def screen and inconsistently sharp lens have therefore been scored more harshly.

Canon's Ixus 300 HS is an ambitious attempt at a high-end ultra-compact digital camera—just be careful not to confuse it with the 2 Megapixel Canon Ixus 300, first on sale back in 2001!

In technical terms, it's perhaps the most advanced Ixus yet, with a backlit CMOS sensor and a lens that opens to f/2 in wide-angle.  Aesthetically, it picks up from the Ixus 110 IS, looking refined and stylish.

Handling

The picture is somewhat mixed in this section.  On the one hand, the Ixus 300 HS has been put together like the other top-quality cameras in the range, with decent materials and a perfect finish that inspires confidence.  It's stylish too, and made us think of an F-117 (in the matte black model with grainy trim) or a Gallardo (the white version with a smooth finish).

On the other hand, the smooth curves don't make holding the camera very easy, and there's no obvious handle or grip.  The black version has a surface with a better grip, but the white one is more like a bar of a soap.  It's almost like we've gone back in time two years, when the Ixus 970 IS flew out of our hands as soon as we picked it up.


Another downside is the screen.  Although having a 16:9 widescreen display isn't a problem in itself, the resolution is too stingy to compete with today's high-end cameras (see inset).

It's disappointing, because using the camera is a real treat thanks to the simple controls.  The Ixus 300 HS has shutter and speed priority modes (though no entirely manual mode) that are perfectly workable, with settings of 1/3 EV, as well as powerful automatic modes if that's what you prefer.

Responsiveness

The Ixus 300 HS isn't the fastest compact camera we've seen recently, but a wait of just over two seconds to switch it on and in between two photos isn't that bad.  It's not great either, especially when you know that Canon has recently been good enough to produce some much faster cameras, like the Ixus 120 which is ready to take your first shot in hardly more than a second.  The autofocus is good enough, but far from exceptional: you can expect to wait around a second, or a little longer in low light.

Worse still, the burst mode is limited to just 1.2 frames per second.  There's nothing unusual about that—but other cameras with BSI CMOS sensors can pile in tens of photos in the same time.  They do then hang for a moment or two, while Canon's burst mode is continuous and returns your camera to normal operation straight away.  It would have been nice to be able to choose between the two options though ...

Image Quality

Canon has a great reputation for keeping electronic noise down in its photos, and a lot of experience using CMOS sensors in its SLRs.  It's not that much of a surprise to discover that it can handle our ISO tests excellently, with a very gradual introduction of grain and blur: only a minimal amount of detail is lost at 400 ISO, a little more at 800 ISO—but A4 prints are still a possibility.  At 1600 ISO, it's difficult to work miracles, and Canon has chosen to reduce electronic noise by introducing heavy blurring that's very easy to spot on an A4 print and visible if you look closely at a 4 x 6'' print.



It's a shame that the lens isn't up to the job.  Although its spec reminds us of the S90, it's actually nothing like it (never mind the difference in sensor sizes) and the lack of sharpness around the edges in wide-angle mode is painfully obvious.  It's much better in telephoto mode, with little change in the centre, but a lot more detail around the edges.

There's one last thing to point out here: under our studio lights, the Ixus 300 HS often changed the way it reproduced colours, alternating between very warm tones and neutral ones, with some cold tones.  We didn't have the same problem outside, and was much less common—and less pronounced—under more everyday lighting, but it remains the case that sometimes doing manual white balancing can improve results.

Video

We had an excellent surprise here.  The Ixus 300 HS films in 720p HD, which is fine, as it's more or less the current standard.  But more impressively, it also has optical zoom, and it's fast enough to allow the continual autofocus to keep everything nice and sharp.  On top of that, there's stereo sound of a much higher quality than we're used to with Canon.

Video is recorded using H.264 and the Quicktime .MOV file (often easier to work with on a hard drive than AVCHD, but with the same relationship between file size and quality.  It's pretty excellent!