Canon IXUS 960 IS

We put Canon's 12 MP 3.7x image stabilisation to the test

It may be hard to remember now, but it is worth remembering that what Apple did for the personal computer with its iMac, Canon did for camera design with the original Ixus. So strong is the design ethos of the brand that even in this incarnation the original design shines through, at least when viewed head-on. The fuselage is a bit more chunky on the £369 Ixus 960IS than on that original film camera, but then again, the 960 is crammed with technology undreamt of when the APS film system came into being 11 years ago.

The Digital Ixus 960 IS comes with a 12MP sensor capable of delivering prints up to 20 x 15 inches in size without pixellating. It has, as its name suggests, an image stabilisation (IS) system to mitigate the effects of human trembling. It even crams a 3.7x optical zoom lens into its body, not to mention a reasonably sized TFT LCD screen on the back, without losing the optical viewfinder option. All in all, it’s an impressive piece of opto-electronic equipment with very little in the way of empty cubic millimetres of air inside its stiff and solid full metal jacket.

The camera’s focusing system has a number of different modes including a face recognition system, which works very well with humans, calculating the probability of where a face is in a scene and concentrating its focusing and metering skills on getting that bit of the frame right. It is, however, best not tried on man’s best friend – it tended to focus, for reasons passing understanding, on the wrong end of the dog in question! Simply switch to the alternative AiAF focus point selection mode for non-human subjects.

For more prosaic focusing choices there’s the dedicated macro/normal/infinity Focus button, which speedily lets you choose between these three most common focusing ranges. The Macro mode gets you as close as 5cm at wide angle, and performs excellently there too. You can also choose between three metering patterns, six ISO sensitivities, and six flash modes including a slow-sync mode.

For more hands-off control of focusing and metering there are the scene modes, which not only choose metering and focusing options for you, but also (depending on the mode) choose appropriate shutter speed ranges, contrast control and even the rendition of foliage colours.

In terms of general handling, the Ixus 960 is generally very nice to use. It’s quick to switch on and off, and functions and mode menus are logical and quick to navigate. The d-pad is touch-sensitive so it shows you which quadrant of the outer ring you are touching by showing that bit enlarged via a graphical representation on the LCD screen. Finally, the option of using the optical viewfinder renders the IS system capable of eliminating shake rather than merely reducing it, as the camera is much more stable when held to the eye. Reviewing images in playback mode is equally speedy… and there’s a plethora of shooting information you can choose to display (or not, depending on your preference).

In terms of the Canon’s image quality, the focusing and exposure systems were spot-on most of the time, although the focusing did (not unexpectedly) struggle sometimes in low contrast lighting.

In general, the 960 delivered very pleasing pictures on pretty much all levels. The colours were bright, there was little fringing (except in high contrast lighting, when there was an element of flaring on the image around the light source). There’s a degree of image degradation when the IS system was struggling to eliminate camera movement, and as usual, digital zooming or the use of very high ISOs is to be discouraged with the Ixus, as the results will look “grainy” and noisy.

Just when we thought the megapixel race had ended with 8MP and 9MP models, the 960 reminds us that some people will still buy a camera on megapixel count alone. There’s no doubt that the Ixus 960IS can deliver excellent images with good lighting, but the slight lens distortion and the amount of light that actually generates each pixel means that the results don’t always do justice to the 12MP figure subtly displayed on the lens’s outer ring. In short, the Ixus 960 can take lovely pictures, but any IS system is a poor substitute for bright daylight when it comes to maximising image quality. Squeezing a lens into a tiny body always runs the risk of wide-angle barrel distortion appearing, even on a digital camera with a decade-old design pedigree.

Final Verdict The IXUS 960 is a portable and easy to use camera. A little less impressive in action than on paper but still quite impressive. 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.