Canon Ixus 400 Review

Overall Rating

Size, build quality, picture quality.

Battery, manual settings.

The Canon Ixus 400 really is a superb wee camera. I looked at quite a few compact digitals of similar spec in this price range and ended up opting for the ixus' because of its superior design and build quality and over a year on I haven't been disappointed. the camera takes superb pictures and is small enough to carry anywhere in a coat or jeans pocket. the menus are straightforward and easy to navigate and the provided settings are fine for the novice or amateur.

Compared to an traditional film camera, the ixus [as with most digitals] can easily cope with low light conditions and if, like me, you're comfortable hand-holding at about 1/30 second and hate that "startled rabbit in a car's headlamps" look produced by built-in flash, you'll find you can use the ixus in dingy pubs, dimly lit buildings and nightclubs etc without resorting to flash at all. I keep my ixus on manual exposure all the time and simply switch the film speed between 'auto' when I'm outdoors and '400' when indoors and it produces great results [although you do need a steady hand].


In fact the ixus's tendency to maximise whatever light there is means it often tends to overcompensate and shots taken at night tend to take on the aspect of mid-afternoon by the time the ixus has boosted the gain. Contrary to what another reviewer said, you can get around this by setting the camera to underexpose by the full two stops, whereupon you can get very atmospheric nightshots quite easily.

Photo quality is superb, with a tendency to over saturate colours which might offend the purist but which i, as an aficionado of slide photography in the past, find gives your photos real dramatic impact.

As with all digitals, one of the major annoyances is in the lag between pressing the shutter and the photo being taken. This feels like about half a second on occasions, so if you're trying to capture moving subjects you need to develop the art of anticipating your shots. Apparently this lag can be reduced by turning off the LCD display, but I haven't experimented with this to say whether it works or not.

The only big complaint I have with the ixus is as regards the battery. Life expectancy on a full charge seems lower than the official blurb suggests. Although a full charge will usually last a whole day of pretty intensive shooting and reviewing. However the really irritating problem with the battery is that the battery life display in the LCD goes from 'full' to 'empty' without any intermediate steps. so one minute you're shooting on what the LCD is showing as being a full battery and the next minute the battery empty indicator is showing. at this point you can usually squeeze about another 5 shots out before the camera packs up completely, which isn't too good if you're miles from your nearest charger at the time. let's hope canon introduce a continuous battery charge indicator on future models - like that used on mobile phones, so we can see exactly how much charge remains at any time.

All in all I'd highly recommend this camera. Getting the best from it in all lighting conditions does require a basic knowledge of photography [such as under/over-exposing and film speeds] as the manual settings are not as 'novice-friendly' as they might be. However, it's not exactly brain surgery, and with a bit of practice you can achieve good results in a variety of situations. photographing moving subjects is also tricky but 'doable' with a bit of anticipation and the battery indicator is pretty useless but apart from that this is a fantastic piece of technology that looks and feels as good as it functions.