IXUS is a series of stylish cameras made by Canon, it features slim metal body, easy to use, and produce good quality pictures. Today I want to introduce one model of IXUS series cameras, it is IXUS 860 IS (also known as PowerShot SD870 IS in North American market). This camera was released in August 2007 and have been widely available in the market today.
The main features of this camera is the large clear LCD screen (3.0" with 230K pixels), Automatic face detection (up to 9 faces) and the most important, it has Optical Image Stabilisation system. The maximum resolution that this camera supports is 8.0 MegaPixels with 3.8x optical zoom and 4x digital zoom. Moreover, it also supports movie recording up to VGA (640x480) resolution up to 30FPS. About its ISO sensitivity, Canon boasts a High ISO 1600 so that you can still get sharp image quality even in bad light condition.
Here's some pictures of the camera body:
As you can see that most of the body parts are made of metal, which make this camera quite sturdy (if not heavier). However, this camera is compact (92.6 x 58.8 x 25.9 mm) and fits your pocket easily. The back panel is quite simple as I'm sure most of you know how to operate this camera with only looking at its buttons and icons. About the camera interface, I might say that Canon cameras are the best, because it is very intuitive, fast, and user-friendly. Some of the interface idea that I like is that it automatically rotates your image whenever you move your camera vertically or horizontally, another good feature is that Canon group its camera functions perfectly, so that they are easy to remember thus you can quickly access them.
Discussing about IXUS 860 IS image quality, I can say that it is very exceptional, it produces very little chromatic abberation and noise in almost all scene conditions. Powered with DIG!C III image processor, this camera is undoubtedly very fast (only takes 0.9s to start up and capture first image and 2.4s to capture the next image with flash turned on). Talking about face detection, IXUS 860 detects faces quite fast altough I found it difficult to detect more than 4 faces. Moreover, thanks to good Optical Image Stabilisation system, it can produce a crisp image even when your hand shakes (Unlike Digital Image Stabilisation which virtually only boosts ISO sensitivity).
See images below for a comparison:
Canon IXUS 860 IS (With Optical Image Stabilisation ON)
Notice that it can still produce a crisp image quality without flash even in dark condition. 
Samsung L730 (With Digital Image Stabilisation ON)
Notice that Digital IS still creates a blurry image in dark condition without flash.
Very good but still not perfect, this camera doesn't have a viewfinder due to large LCD, however it is compensated with good automatic brightness adjustment of the LCD which guarantees clear LCD view even at below sunlight. Another drawback is the lack of manual exposure, however the Auto mode performs quite good in most conditions therefore you won't probably need manual settings. High ISO function may not work very well after ISO 400 as noise will be noticeable, but this is still reasonable for a very compact camera.
In conclusion, Canon IXUS 860 IS is a very good compact cameras with little flaws. It is proven to be a worthy successor for IXUS 850. For a price around US$280, this camera is perfect for beginners in photography or casual users.
To see some sample images taken from this camera, click image link below:
3 comments:
hello my friends i just add your link in my blogroll with your username the avatar :) thanks :D
Hi, do you know any camera that is cheaper than this one, but with the same tech?
Yep, there's the new Canon IXUS 80 IS or PowerShot SD1100 IS in US. Overall, it has the same features but with a cheaper price!
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