Canon Digital Ixus 700
In summary
[ia] Rounded contours and a larger, 7.1 megapixel sensor characterise Canon’s new Digital Ixus 700. Featuring the latest DiG!C II image processor, it sports a generous control suite for a point-and-shoot camera. The rear panel mode dial has settings for playback, auto, manual, scene and movie capture. In auto, the only functions you can change are resolution and quality – plus settings accessed via the arrow buttons. Manual lets you set exposure compensation, white balance, ISO and photo effects. The scene mode calls up nine scene mode and the movie clips can be recorded at VGA or QVGA resolution with frame rates of 30 or 15 fps or QQVGA clips at 15 fps. A special ‘Fast Frame Rate’ setting records QVGA clips at 60 fps. . . [more]
Full review
Rating (out of 10) Build: 8.5Ease of use: 8.0Image quality: 8.0Value for money: 8.5
[ia] Canon’s new Digital Ixus 700 is characterised by rounded contours and a larger, 7.1 megapixel sensor paired to the latest DiG!C II image processor. It sports a generous control suite for a point-and-shoot camera. The rear panel mode dial has settings for playback, auto, manual, scene and movie capture. In auto, the only functions you can change are resolution and quality – plus settings accessed via the arrow buttons. Manual lets you set exposure compensation, white balance, ISO and photo effects. The scene mode dial calls up nine scene modes. Movie clips can be recorded at VGA or QVGA resolution with frame rates of 30 or 15fps or QQVGA clips at 15fps. A special ‘Fast Frame Rate’ setting records QVGA clips at 60fps.
Aperture settings are non-adjustable but shutter speeds between one and 15 seconds can be set via the Long Shutter setting, which is accessed in Manual mode. Stitch Assist is also available only with this setting. ‘Lockable’ functions include focus, exposure and flash exposure. Using AF lock, you can focus on hard-to-focus subjects; with AE Lock you can set the exposure and focus separately and the FE Lock lets you lock the flash exposure so that the exposure settings are correctly set for a particular portion of your subject.
An interesting addition is the ‘My Colors’ mode, which lets you change the colour balance in shots, transform skin tones or record in a specified colour. Also new is the Digital Macro mode, which uses digital zoom to enlarge part of a close-up subject for greater impact. Although up to 4x enlargement is supported, we found it difficult to obtain correctly exposed pictures at high magnifications with the test camera.
On test the Ixus 700 produced reasonably sharp pictures with good colour accuracy but slightly elevated contrast and saturation. Chromatic aberration was barely visible and image noise was generally low at ISO settings up to 200. The auto white balance had the usual problems with tungsten lighting but otherwise delivered accurate colours. We measured an average capture lag of 0.5 seconds, which reduced to 0.1 seconds with pre-focusing. The burst mode captured five high-resolution shots at 0.55 second intervals.[23]
IMATEST RESULTS
Overall resolution is high enough to produce excellent quality A3 prints.
Chromatic aberration is low enough to be irrelevant in all but the most demanding shooting situations.
Colour accuracy is well above average and the slightly elevated saturation is typical of many compact digicams, reflecting the preferences of most amateur photographers. The small colour deviations revealed will be easily correctable with editing software.
Colour accuracy is generally good but the camera has a slight tendency towards over-exposure for red, magenta and yellow hues. The visible grain in the white balance error section indicates the camera could produce noisy images at high ISO settings.
Specifications
Image sensor: 7.21 x 5.38mm CCD with 7,400,000 photosites (7.1 megapixels effective)
Lens: 7.7-23.1mm f2.8-4.9 zoom lens (37-111mm in 35mm format)
Zoom ratio: 3x optical, up to 4x digital
Dimensions (wxhxd): 89.5 ø— 57.0 ø— 26.5mm
Weight: 170g (without battery and card)
Image formats: Stills – JPEG (Exif 2.2); Movies AVI (Motion JPEG/WAV) VAG/QVGA at 15/30 fps, QVGA at 60fps, QQVGA at 15fps
Shutter speed range: 15-1/2000 sec.
Focus system/range: TTL AF; 9-point AiAF/1-point AF (fixed to centre); range 50cm to infinity; macro to 5cm
Exposure metering/control: Evaluative, Centre-weighted average or Spot metering; Program AE plus 9 scene modes
White balance: TTL auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent (x2), custom
Flash modes/range (ISO auto): Auto, auto with red-eye reduction, on with redeye reduction, on, off, slow synchro; range 0.5-5.0m
ISO range: Auto*, ISO 50/100/200/400
Sequence shooting: 2.0 shots/sec. (Large/Fine with LCD monitor off)
Storage Media: 32MB Secure Digital card; holds 9 high-resolution images or up to 265 VGA shots
Viewfinder: Real-image optical zoom
LCD monitor: 2.0-inch, low-temperature polycrystalline silicon TFT colour LCD
Power supply: NB-3L rechargeable lithium-ion battery
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