Canon Ixus 55 Review

Overall Rating

Image quality.
Large display.
Great indoor shots as well as outdoors.
Good hi-res movie capture.
Great battery life.

Like many digital cameras, it's not quick enough to focus and shoot.
It needs a big memory card for longer video clips.

I upgraded to the Canon Ixus 55 5MP digital camera three months ago. The metallic casework and controls exude quality - very nice! What I found striking over my old camera (Casio EX-Z3) was the improvement in the quality of the images. Although the resolution is greater, it was the improvement in colour balance and vibrancy etc., that was most noticeable (pixel resolution is no guarantee of picture quality). In all, this camera has a much more realistic image capture.

As ever, the slight delay when pressing the shutter button is very annoying when trying to shoot unique moments! The built in flash works well, and will light subjects a good 10 - 15 feet from the lens. The 2.5" display makes reviewing images with friends more worthwhile, but the display marks easily though. The battery will easily last a week's holiday (with reasonable use). The charger is light and very compact if you need to take it away with you. There are a lot of different settings to play with, but as this is a pocket camera, I tend to leave the camera in fully automatic mode (I would opt for a digital SLR if I wanted to get more involved).

Skiers/mountaineers will like the "snow" mode which compensates for the exposure difficulties of shooting in this terrain. Video clips are very good quality with the 30fps at 640x480 setting. There's also a fast action mode. You will need a capacious SD card for any volume of video (minimum 512Mb or above). I use a high speed 2Gb card, which you can get for around £60 on EBay. The higher the speed the quicker the camera will be ready to take the next shot. Uploading to a PC is also quicker.

This is a great compact camera which takes great photo/video, and I am not in the least bit tempted to go for memory hungry higher mega-pixel resolutions. 5MP images print to A4 with great results. I have seen 5MP shots printed to A3 with great clarity too. The size and quality of the lens plays a big part in this. The question I would ask is: Can a compact camera lens do a 7MP CCD justice? This camera is just the quality of product that one would expect from a brand leading business such as Canon! EXCELLENT!