Canon IXUS 80 IS

Style and substance from the latest in the Canon's IXUS range

Canon’s IXUS range is iconic – small, perfectly formed cameras that are high on style. The 80 IS is no exception, offered in a choice of four colours from Classic Silver and Candy Pink to Chocolate, and our favourite, the rather slinky golden Caramel. In its smoothly curved, relatively small shell, the 80 IS is definitely a stylish camera. But has it got the substance to match?

Yes it has – and in spades, too. It’s functional, with tactile, responsive buttons and a jog-dial zoom. Pleasantly heavy and noisy, it fits nicely into the hand and makes good, old-fashioned zoom and shutter sounds. But that’s not all. Packing 8 megapixels and a maximum resolution of 3264 x 2448, its basic performance is just right for a compact. 3x optical zoom combined with 4x digital zoom to a total hybrid of 12x backs this up, and the IXUS 80 IS has got a nifty little feature up its oh-so-elegant sleeve when it comes to combining the two. It can be hard to tell at a glance when you’ve slid from pure optical and into digital zoom, so the 80 IS makes it easy, by switching the colour of the text at the top of the LCD screen, and flashing it up as you change over. This is great for quick snaps in conditions where digital zoom would severely mar your images. It’s simple, obvious, little things like this that make the Canon Digital IXUS 80 IS a joy to use.

Another thing that makes this camera great to shoot with is the sheer quality of its colour. Under daylight, tones are spot-on, perfectly reproduced and clear. Bright colours pop vividly, whilst the more subtle shading in muted ones is brought out, even when using basic Auto settings. It’s possible to simply point and shoot with this camera thanks to its primary colour filtered CCD, but you’d be missing out on the rest of its features if you did.

The IXUS 80 IS boasts 11 scene modes, although bizarrely Landscape isn’t represented. This is no big deal – the camera deals well with outdoor lighting and distance shots, especially in full sunlight. Portrait mode handles flesh tones reasonably well and the camera’s Face Recognition is excellent, although the image-conscious IXUS doesn’t offer a softer portrait mode for skimming over imperfections.  Sunset has a warm, dull cast to it, and Night Snap is particularly good, with a faster shutter speed than most, allowing shots in the dark to be clearer and largely free from motion blur. The 80 IS also boasts Canon’s Image Stabiliser, hence its name, and this also contributes to the clarity of low-light shots. The Kids and Pets mode is particularly good for tracking fast-moving subjects, capturing movement well. The flash in Indoors mode, however, is quite cold and stark – and with only Auto or forced-on flash, there’s no real way of fixing it. This lets an otherwise great camera down massively, as those punchy bright colours and smooth gradations of tone that it’s capable of capturing just aren’t represented as well as they would be with soft or fill-in flash.

Fortunately, the 80 IS boasts a good range of colour settings, so you can compensate for this somewhat. As well as Vivid and Neutral settings, there’s also a respectable range of more artistic options, offering modes for pale and dark skintones, as well as sepia, black and white and a range of vivid colour casts. Best of all though is the option to create your own custom colour balance in My Colours; a great option that gives you a good level of control over your shots. With easy to find manual settings for exposure, white balance and ISO options (which range from 80 to 1600), you can customise to your heart’s content.

All of which is great for more advanced users. Fortunately, the design of this camera’s menu systems and button layout is intuitive and fluid, which means that it’s easy for less experienced digital photographers to find these settings and learn about what they do, too. There’s also a good range of post-shooting options. Support for PictBridge and Canon’s Direct Print makes it easy to print chosen images through a compatible printer, without messing around with cables or memory cards. There is the option to record a 60 second Sound Memo to accompany each image, and the camera’s start-up and sounds are all customisable, so you can really make this stylish camera your own.

This is an ideal camera for fashion-conscious intermediate users, as it offers a great combination of usability, imaging quality, and style. Subtler and more elegant than the brightly coloured fashion compacts from rivals Fujifilm and Olympus, it performs well with no major flaws aside from the dearth of flash options. A fantastic camera for learning more about photography and exploring its artistic side, it can also be seen as a reassuringly expensive, above average point-and-shoot. There are cheaper 8 megapixel models on the market, and there are more highly specified compacts. But the IXUS is the iPod of digital photography: it’s smart, stylish, and you want one.

Final Verdict Let down by a lack of flash options, but otherwise a stylish camera that's great for intermediate photographers. OVERALL

Claire started studying photography over six years ago where she was intrigued by the act of image making. Claire has a great passion for traditional photographic methods however she’s found the change to the digital medium to be a fascinating advancement.