Canon IXUS 210 review

Review Canon IXUS 210 - Canon takes touchscreen compacts to the next level with its latest offering.

The Canon IXUS brand has been with us since 1996 and has long been associated with super-compact and beautifully designed cameras. Whatever else this Ixus 210 offers, we can’t help feel it’s lacking the cool industrial design of previous models; nor is it particularly compact.

That said, if you ignore its pedigree, you’d find the 210 an agreeable camera both to look at and to hold. It feels reassuringly solid and well made, and is smooth and comfortable to handle. The only buttons are on the top plate – on/off, playback, mode, shutter release and zoom and are all self-explanatory if a little fiddly to use.

The reason for the scarcity of visible controls is that the large 3.5in LCD is a touchscreen and all the other camera functions are controlled by that. Ever since Apple introduced a certain mobile phone, touchscreens have been appearing everywhere and are undoubtedly the future. It makes sense to put the real estate of the screen to good use by adding virtual buttons to it.

The Ixus 210 powers up almost instantly and the space to each side of the 4:3 format image on the wide-screen LCD displays various ‘buttons’. By default, you get controls for flash, self-timer, focus mode and functions, while the ‘Display’ button lets you hide them all. Touch a button and its options appear in the centre of the screen, complete with easy to follow instructions.

The Function button on the LCD allows you to delve deeper into the camera settings. The touchscreen brings up the usual options, such as ISO, metering mode, white balance image quality and so on. There’s also a Menu button which lets you customise things like sounds, LCD brightness, date and time and more. Again, everything is clearly annotated and simple to deal with. The touchscreen is so much better than the myriad of tiny buttons found on most compact cameras. That said, if you’re an iPhone user, you’ll find the Ixus’ screen less responsive to your touch.  This is particularly noticeably when you scroll through menu items – sometimes you have to try a couple of times to get things moving.

Meanwhile in playback mode, you also use the touchscreen to browse images, but by touching a button on each side of the screen, not by flicking through, iPhone-like. Similarly, there’s no ‘pinching’ with your finger and thumb to zoom into a picture, you have to touch a ‘magnifying’ button to zoom. Not a real problem, especially if you’ve not experienced an Apple touchscreen, it’s just a case of getting used to it. And, as we’ve already said, it’s infinitely better than fumbling with tiny buttons.

The touchscreen can also be used for selecting where you want the camera to focus. This takes a little getting used to, but is a great feature. Just a part of the screen and that will become the active focus point when you then half-press the shutter button. Genius.

So that’s the interface, which is hard to fault, but what’s it like at taking photos? Well, there’s a question. Lens quality is good although there’s some inevitable – but acceptable – distortion at the wide-angle setting. The digital zoom, though, is poor and best avoided.

As you’d expect, noise increases with ISO, but we were disappointed at the amount of deterioration even at ISO 400 – you really need to keep the ISO at 200 or less for decent images, which is not always possible. On the plus side, the anti-shake function does an admirable job and therefore allows you to use lower ISO settings much of the time.

Speaking of low light, a maximum shutter speed of 15 seconds (in Long Shutter mode) is a useful feature for tripod-mounted night shots. And for more usual low-light work, the built-in flash gives natural results with effective red-eye reduction. The flash also adds a burst of light when required for outdoor shots, to reduce shadows and add a sparkle to eyes.

What it lacks in style and image quality, the Ixus 210 gains in terms of ease of use, although it is top money for what it offers. Once you’ve used the touchscreen you won’t want to go back to buttons!