Canon Digital IXUS 860 IS

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Each fall a barrage of new cameras hits the market, anticipating the year-end holidays. This year's batch of Canons includes the IXUS 860 IS. From its model number, you might think that it's a follow-up to the IXUS 850 IS, but with its wider-than-normal, 28mm-to-105mm, f/2.8-to-f/5.8, 3.8x optical zoom lens, it's not.

Aside from a step up to an 8.3-megapixel CCD sensor, a larger 3-inch, 230,000-pixel LCD, and Canon's new Digic III processor, there's not much different in the IXUS 860 other than some nice cosmetic enhancements. Along with the new processor comes Canon's Advanced Face Detection, which can pick out up to nine faces in a frame and use the faces to set autofocus and exposure.

Design

Possibly the saddest change with this new model is that Canon omitted an optical viewfinder from the IXUS 860. This was probably done to make room for the larger screen, but it's an unfortunate compromise. On the upside, Canon spruced up the look of the camera's back. This includes the newer version of Canon's multi-controller pad. It's more responsive and a raised ring around the edge gives it a better feel.

For more details on the IXUS 860's design and image quality, click on the image.

Plus, when you rest your thumb in any particular direction on the pad, a graphic appears on the LCD to show you what you'd do if you press fully. This helps you to keep your eyes on the screen when you have to change a setting while shooting.

Probably the only real ergonomic flaw on the IXUS 860 is that there's no convenient place to rest your thumb. So, while all the shooting controls can be accessed through buttons on the right side of the camera, one-handed shooting can be annoying as you're forced to put your thumb on top of the right edge of the LCD screen--thereby blocking some of what you're trying to frame in the picture.

Though the camera's optical image stabilization (hence the IS in the name) should help keep things steady, you may welcome the use of a second hand, since the IXUS 860 weighs in at a somewhat 160g.

Features

As usual with Canon's IXUS cameras, you won't find any manual exposure controls. Instead you have to rely on the camera's exposure compensation if you want to tweak the camera's automatic exposure, or resort to one of the camera's 10 scene modes to handle out-of-the-ordinary shooting scenarios.

Flash exposure compensation lets you control the output of the flash, so the flash doesn't overpower your subjects if you're too close--a nice touch that's not found in all compact cameras.

Performance and Image Quality »