After the tragic (and still somehow mysterious) loss of chalkidiki it was upon me to get a replacement camera for my parents. The required features where less but very selective: a small compact camera with optical viewfinder and image stabilizer. It would have been nice if it had also worked with standard AA batteries but this requirement reduced the choices to zero so it was given up. Especially the optical viewfinder was it then which kept the field of candidates still very small: Canon Digital IXUS 800 IS, 850 IS and 950 IS, Casio Exilim EX-Z120 and a few Sony Cybershot DSC-W* models. The Sonys were expelled mainly because of the MemoryStick, which I am no friend of (for no particular reason). The Exilim disqualified herself with her minimum focal length of 38mm. And between the IXUS' the 850 IS made the race also because of her better support of the wide angle range with 28mm minumum focal length against 35mm with both the 800 IS and 950 IS.

So, the decision was made: The IXUS 850 IS should be it. -- dpreview.com: Canon Digital IXUS 850 IS

I bought it on monday and now after 24h of playing around, shooting wildly almost everything and creating more than 200 mostly useless pictures it's time for a first little resume: I like it. ;-) mostly. ;-)

quack! Some features of the camera I like very much, most notably the image stabilizer and the manual long time exposure option up to 15 secs.

rotate! move on!

The camera is pretty fast. From pressing the on/off button it takes almost no time to be ready to shoot. The lens moves into position within (less than?) one second and everything is ready to go. Also the AutoFocus is very fast and so the camera is snapshot-fit. AF support light improves focusing at least in situations with poor light. (paragraph added at 2007-08-07 1100 CEST)

The Image Quality is quite okay (as far as I can tell (now)) but the camera produces quite some distortion in wide angle view photos. (I'll hand in some photos to show that within the next days.)

 

Finally I've to list the thing I don't like on that camera (yet, this list may be continued in future):

  • no battery indicator - if you run out of power you'll just notice when it's to late. (happend to me after the first 24h and about 220 pics.)
  • no review button to check the last few images. you always have to switch to replay mode-
  • image distortion in wide angle (but I was warned befor buying.)

But since there will never be a perfect camera which fits all our needs (and which we can afford to buy), I'd say it's a good camera for everyday use. - For the real pictures I'm going to get myself a DSLR anyway. ;-)

yeah. that's it. my first camera review. any comments?

 

addendum 2007-08-02 13:30:

Problem on my parents computer (Win XP) when connecting camera: although installation was made by the book the 'Canon Camera Window' wont appear when the camera is connected with the PC and turned on. Checking the services i noticed that the service 'Canon Camera Access Library 8' could not be started (Error 1068: "The dependency service or group failed to start" / Fehler 1068: "Der Abhängigkeitsdienst oder die Abhängigkeitgruppe konnten nicht gestartet werden.") But luckily a little google search brought quick on the right track for the solution: I found a hint in a forum about the "SSDP Discovery Service" which was disabled on my parents computer. I enabled this service and now it starts.