When you’re a digital camera, it’s easy to be compact and cheap, but Canon’s IXUS 115 HS also provides ample quality, making it a solid choice for everyday requirements.
Let’s face it, if you’re a wannabe pro or you’re a bit snooty about your photography – the type to say, “Watch your fingerprints on my artwork, Goddammit”, for example – you’re not going to be buying a digital camera from the cheaper and more cluttered end of your electrical retailer of choice. Even if it is a Canon.
But for the rest of us, the IXUS 115 HS, which launched earlier this year, ticks a whole lot of boxes.
Compact? Check. Cheap? Certainly. Light? You betcha.
The most important part of any check-list on some piece of kit is always the quality, though, and in this regard the IXUS 115 HS compares favourably to any of its competitors at the lower end of the digital camera recommended retail price spectrum.
The blurb declares that it makes it easy for you “to take outstanding shots in all conditions”, and while it’s clearly no substitute for a top-range digital camera, this one measures up well in its own sphere, irrespective of the light quality or external conditions.
Canon’s tried and tested Smart AUTO mode is present and correct, meaning that if you’re not that bothered reading the manual to find out what exactly all the dials and knobs are for, you can leave the decision-making to the hardware itself – and in this regard it’s surprisingly good, automatically adjusting a host of things including focus, exposure, motion and face detection.
The IXUS 115 HS comes with 12.1 megapixel resolution with a zoom range of 4x, both of which are perfectly fine for a camera of this type.
A 7.6cm LCD screen offers more clarity than you really feel entitled to and the sleek feel of the camera itself is nowhere near as girly as some compact digitals – once you stay away from the pink edition, of course.
If there is a gripe, it’s that some of the features appear to be superfluous. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should, and we’ve yet to be convinced that the Movie Digest feature, say, which records up to four seconds of footage before each snap – so that you can “create a bonus movie!!!” (our exclamation marks…) – will ever be useful to anybody.
All in all, though, it’s a camera that ticks a lot of boxes for the casual user and would complement your overall collection of hardware if you’re a more seasoned campaigner. For the price, you won’t go far wrong.
The IXUS 115 HS, €219.00 RRP, is available from all good camera stockists.
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