Canon Ixus 310 HS

Last year, Canon launched its first Ixus 'HS' camera, complete with backlit CMOS sensor for high sensitivity shooting and decent performances. A year down the line, the Ixus 310 HS fuses features from several of the brand's high-end compacts, including a backlit CMOS sensor, a large touchscreen and a new zoom lens.

Handling

The Ixus 330 HS looks quite similar to the previous model, the Ixus 300 HS. It has the same stylish combination of curves and sharp angles, a high-quality build, sturdy assembly and firm but accurate buttons. Unfortunately though, it also has the same connections compartment that's difficult to use with short nails and the same tapered design, which makes the Ixus 310 HS tend to slip out of your hands, especially in hot weather or with wet hands.


That said, there have been some considerable improvements, the most notable of which has got to be the screen. The LCD has been made bigger, has a boosted definition and is now touch-sensitive. In this respect, the Ixus 310 HS has inherited as much from the Ixus 210 as it has from the Ixus 300 HS. Don't count on the screen's colour fidelity when sorting though photos and choosing which ones to delete though, as with overexposed light greys and skewed colour reproduction, you won't get a just representation of your shots on this LCD. However, the new screen is still very pleasant to use for lining up shots and for navigating seamlessly through the options and settings in the internal menus.

There's now a video record button accessible directly on the touchscreen, and which can be placed wherever you like in the customisable menu (see inset). However, the assisted panorama function has mysteriously disappeared, and it hasn't been replaced by one of the now-popular 'sweep' panorama modes seen in other compacts. That's strange too, as Canon was something of a panorama pioneer in the early days of compact digital cameras.

The camera's internal interface is clear, simple and has been designed fairly well. We just got a bit annoyed by the fact that you have to scroll through menus to find the option you're looking for, as it would have been more practical to have options arranged directly around the edges of the screen.

Responsiveness

The Ixus 310 HS is a relatively responsive camera on the whole, taking under two second to start up. However, there are faster models out there. So while the Canon is out of action for around two seconds between two photos, some compacts can snap shot after shot with just one second of turnaround time.


That said, this Ixus certainly isn't slow. In fact, the autofocus is on the better side of average for current compact cameras, working in under a second in all conditions and sometimes focusing in half a second in good light. The burst mode of 2.3 fps isn't particularly impressive for a camera with a BSI CMOS sensor, but it is, at least, a continuous burst, and it doesn't freeze up the camera while saving shots, as is the case with many compacts with burst modes of 10 fps or over.

Picture Quality

The 12-Megapixel BSI CMOS sensor has already been seen in several other cameras on the market. In fact, Canon itself has already put this sensor to excellent use in the Ixus 220 HS. As you can see, smoothing is clearly visible at 1600 ISO, but an 8" x 10" (20 x 27 cm) print at 800 ISO will still come out decent enough.

At wide-angle settings, the Ixus 310 HS lens takes shots that are sharp in the middle of the frame but, although most of the image holds up well, the corners are distinctly blurred. The reason for this is fairly simple: when shooting our test scene, the camera chose to use its full lens aperture, and at f/2 the lens lacks consistency across the frame. A quick switch to aperture priority mode and selecting f/2.8 or f/4 makes the corners of the frame look sharper. Things are better at telephoto settings, and shots taken at f/5.8 (the maximum aperture) are sharp and consistent.


Finally, a quick word about this camera's colour settings. In real-life situations, the Ixus 310 HS took pictures that were a little warm but still pleasant, as is usually the case with Canon cameras. However, under some types of artificial lighting, we found that the white balance didn't always perform in the same way. There's an example of that above in the ISO tests—the shot taken at 200 ISO has a fairly heavy yellow tint. This isn't something that happens systematically, but we noticed happening from time to time.

Video

Like all of Canon's 'HS' compacts, the Ixus 310 HS films Full HD video at 24 fps. As with the other models, the picture is sharp and pleasant, even if very bright scenes can sometimes be overexposed.

The quality of the stereo sound is somewhere between the Ixus 220 HS and the PowerShot SX230 HS, in that the stereo effect is clearly audible and the sound is relatively accurate, even if it does sound a bit muffled.
The Ixus 310 HS also suffers from a problem that's not been seen in other 'HS' models, as the noise of the zoom lens can be heard in videos. You're therefore best off only using the zoom in silent movies or not changing focal length while filming, which is a bit disappointing.