Canon Digital IXUS Wireless

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http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/digitalcameras/0,39030233,39193725,00.htm

Reviewed 1 February 2006

Reviewed by Shams Tarek

Editor's note: The Canon Digital IXUS Wireless is identical to the Canon Digital IXUS 50, with the addition of Wi-Fi networking capabilities. Read the review of the IXUS 50 for a complete evaluation of the photographic capabilities of the camera.

With Wi-Fi networking integrated into most new laptops sold today and industry-standard add-on adaptors available to easily upgrade older laptops and desktops, the ability to use Wi-Fi to transfer photos from digital cameras is becoming an increasingly attractive option. Though not the first manufacturer to produce a consumer-level camera with wireless capabilities -- Kodak and Nikon released ones earlier -- Canon has created a boon for remote-shooting fans with its £300 Digital IXUS Wireless, a 5-megapixel ultracompact that is basically an IXUS 50 with a slightly different body and a built-in Wi-Fi transmitter.

Like the IXUS 50 (which is around £100 cheaper), the Digital IXUS Wireless has a 35mm-to-105mm (in 35mm-film terms) lens with a relatively slow f/2.8-to-f/4.9 maximum aperture, a 51mm (2.0-inch) LCD and optical viewfinder, limited manual control, snappy shooting performance and middle-of-the-road image quality. But the IXUS Wireless distinguishes itself from the IXUS 50, and even from its wireless competitors, with its impressive remote control capabilities.

While Kodak's EasyShare One can upload pictures to an online gallery and email the link from Wi-Fi hot spots connected to the Internet (no other camera can do that), all image transfers must happen after shooting in playback mode. Nikon's Coolpix P1 and P2 can send pictures to either a memory card, a Wi-Fi-enabled computer or both as they're captured, but there is no remote shooting. The IXUS Wireless can not only transfer automatically but can also be controlled in almost any way using a Wi-Fi-enabled computer, from initial shooting parameters to final transfer.

Using Canon's RemoteCapture utility, which currently runs only on Windows XP SP2 (Mac OS X support is due this spring), an IXUS Wireless user can remotely control zoom, image size and compression level, ISO speed, white balance, metering mode, colour mode, focus point, macro mode, autofocus type and flash mode. There's a live image preview that can be turned off to preserve the camera's battery (though an optional AC adaptor is recommended for remote shooting), and images can be saved to the memory card, the computer or both. In automatic interval shooting mode, the number of images that can be saved is limited only by disk space, up to 99,999 shots.

Finishing off the Canon Digital IXUS Wireless's Wi-Fi feature set is the ability to print wirelessly without the use of a computer. The camera comes with a Wi-Fi adaptor that plugs into a printer's PictBridge-compatible USB port, traditionally used for wired camera-to-printer connections. Unfortunately, it works with only Canon printers at the moment. However, setup with a Canon Selphy CP510 was simple -- all it took was a menu setting on the camera and the single push of a Setup button on the adaptor. Wi-Fi setup for computer control was also fairly simple, with the included instructions explaining the entire process clearly.

If you don't have a yen for remote control or wireless printing, then save yourself some money and buy the IXUS 50. But if the wireless remote control option sounds like the solution to a problem you have, you'd be wise to give the IXUS Wireless a try.

Edited by Lori Grunin
Additional editing by Nick Hide