Canon Digital IXUS 65

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http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/digitalcameras/0,39030233,49263374,00.htm

Reviewed 21 April 2006

Reviewed by Will Greenwald

It may be small, but the Canon Digital IXUS 65 is fierce. This little 6-megapixel point-and-shoot manages to pack zippy performance and snappy photos into a package you can fit in your trouser pocket. If you have large hands, you'll probably find its control layout a little uncomfortable, and it doesn't have an optical viewfinder, but the IXUS 65 is still a great compact camera.

Almost identical to its little brother, the IXUS 60, the IXUS 65 incorporates the same sensor, lens and internal components -- its only advantage over the less expensive IXUS 60 is its 76mm (3-inch) LCD screen.

Design
The camera's body measures a scant 89 by 56mm and less than 25mm thick with its lens tucked in. At 164g with an SD card and battery installed, the IXUS 65 certainly isn't the lightest or smallest ultracompact camera we've ever seen, but it's still slim enough to squeeze into a pocket. The right side of the IXUS 65's rectangular body is slightly curved, letting it rest comfortably in your right hand. A slightly textured square of plastic sits on the back of the camera, just above the controls, giving photographers a thumb rest.

The big 76mm LCD screen on the IXUS 65 provides plenty of room to frame your shot but not so much room to operate the camera. The buttons on the back include a standard four-way-plus-OK control pad, menu, display and a button for printing when the camera is hooked up to a PictBridge-compatible printer. The pad allows easy navigation around the IXUS 65's menu system, and you can directly set options such as the self-timer, continuous shooting, macro, flash and ISO sensitivity with the pad's direction arrows. The top edge of the camera holds the shutter release, the zoom rocker, the power button and a slider for switching between photo, movie and playback modes. The zoom rocker is a nubbly ring around the shutter release, facing the front edge of the camera -- it's uncomfortable for large fingers and extremely awkward to operate with one hand, especially when zooming out.

Features
The Canon Digital IXUS 65 has a pleasant handful of features that give its tiny form a nice amount of flexibility. Canon couples a 6-megapixel CCD with a 35mm-to-105mm (35mm equivalent) zoom lens. The lens has a pretty narrow maximum aperture of f/2.8 to f/4.9, with a shutter-speed range of 1/1,500 second to 15 seconds, average numbers for models in this space. The camera has automatic, program and manual exposure modes with a range of plus or minus 2EV in 1/3EV steps, which is also on a par with the competition. Its sensitivity range goes as high as ISO 800 -- that's not quite as much as the latest offerings from Fujifilm and Sony, but it will still give you more low-light flexibility than most cameras of its size. In addition to standard automatic and manual exposure modes, the IXUS 65 offers a handful of scene modes. Besides the standard night-time and portrait presets, you'll find options for photographing beaches, plants, snowy days and fireworks. It even has an underwater mode to use in conjunction with the optional underwater housing. Color Accent and Color Swap modes can filter and change colours in the camera, producing smart artistic effects. Combine the camera's 30fps VGA movie capture with the Color Accent modes, shoot a red balloon against an otherwise monochrome scene, add some voice-overs in French, and you'll be on your way to Cannes in no time.

Performance
In most cases, the Canon Digital IXUS 65's performance feels quick. After taking about 1.4 seconds from power-on to first shot, the camera takes a respectable 1.9 seconds between shots, which increases marginally with flash. Its modest 0.6-second shutter lag holds for both bright scenes and dim ones. Its burst shooting zips along at 2.1fps with no buffer constraint on the number of shots.

Image quality
The IXUS 65's photos were pleasing, especially in the low-ISO ranges. At ISO 80, shots look crisp and clear with very little fringing and solid colour reproduction. Images predictably become noisy at ISO 400 and ISO 800, but it isn't so apparent as to render the photo unusable.

The Canon Digital IXUS 65 is an extremely solid ultracompact, with performance and photo quality that more than make up for its few design flaws. It's a surprisingly good shooter, and its feature set makes it quite flexible for a camera of its size. That said, it's basically a more expensive version of the IXUS 60 with a larger screen and no optical viewfinder. If you're willing to give up the big LCD, the IXUS 60 would be a more economical choice.

Shooting speed in seconds  
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Typical shot-to-shot time

Time to first shot

Shutter lag (typical)

Canon Digital IXUS 65

1.9 

1.4 

0.5 

Canon PowerShot A530

2.8 

2.1 

0.5 

Fujifilm FinePix V10

2.0 

1.5 

0.5 

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ3

2.6 

2.9 

1.0 

Typical continuous-shooting speed in frames per second  
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Typical continuous-shooting speed

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ3

2.7 

Canon Digital IXUS 65

2.1 

Canon PowerShot A530

1.8 

Fujifilm FinePix V10

1.1 

Edited by Lori Grunin
Additional editing by Kate Macefield