Canon Digital IXUS 850 IS

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By Will Greenwald, CNET.com
Oct 30, 2006

Last spring, Canon impressed us with its stylish high-end shooter, the 6-megapixel Digital IXUS 800 IS. It had a great lens and produced great images, all in an attractive, pocketable, metal body. With the follow-up Canon Digital IXUS 850 IS, the company improves upon its previous design by squeezing in a wider lens and a higher resolution sensor.

Design
The 7-megapixel camera's tiny body is shiny, curvy, and very attractive. But it may be just a bit too stylish for its own good. For instance, the power button is a tiny, illuminated half-oval built flush into the top panel; without actually pressing it, you might easily mistake it for an indicator light or a design flaw.

The Canon IXUS 850 IS's mode dial curves slightly outward, flowing into the design of the camera, making a comfortable resting spot for your thumb. But it feels slightly slippery when switching camera modes.

Beyond those quirks, though, the IXUS 850 IS is a standard, straightforwardly designed Canon shooter, with a four-way navigation switch, additional buttons, and the shutter-release/zoom-rocker mechanism we've grown used to. The small, all-metal body weighs slightly more than 170g, and at an inch thick, is just the right size for most pockets. Though small, the camera still has enough room on its body to hold both a 2.5-inch LCD and an optical viewfinder, a rare and welcome feature on an ultracompact.

Features
The 850 IS's most prominent feature is its image-stabilized, F2.8-to-F5.8, 28mm-to-105mm-equivalent lens. The 3.8x zoom range offers the flexibility of wide-angle focal lengths, while still providing a bit more zoom power than the average 3x point-and-shoot lens. Though the IXUS 800 IS had a 4x zoom lens, the IXUS 850 IS's 28mm-equivalent wide shot more than makes up for the slightly smaller telephoto factor.

In addition to the flexible lens, the IXUS 850 IS has some handy snapshot features. The camera's sensor can be boosted to as high as ISO 1,600 for low-light or high-movement shots, though you'll want to keep it at ISO 800 or lower because of image noise. You can shoot 30fps VGA video, or bump it up to 60fps QVGA (320 x 240) to capture action footage for half-speed playback. If you're looking for manual controls, however, look elsewhere; like the IXUS 800 IS, the 850 IS's aperture and shutter settings can't be changed at all, its focus modes are all automatic, and the camera's manual mode allows only exposure compensation, color correction, metering, and white-balance adjustments.

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