tch7's Full Review: Canon PowerShot S230 / IXUS v³ Digital Camera
Christmas 2001, I acquired a Nikon F65 (N65 in the US), which is a great SLR, even though I dropped it down a steep, rocky hillside and had to get $200 worth of repairs. However, I often go biking or walking around my house where carrying a camera as large as the F65 is a nuisance - so we figured we should get a small digital camera that would barely be noticeable. Since my brother was stopping in Singapore in a layover back from Australia, we figured we'd get him to buy us one, as electronics are cheaper over there. He did a fair bit of research into the capabilities of the cameras available, and then chose the IXUS V3 (we'd never owned a digital camera before, so we didn't put much input into what we wanted). He purchased it, along with a number of accessories, for just under $700 Canadian - which is about how much the camera alone is in Canada.
That was just under three months ago, so we've gotten fairly comfortable with it. I feel that my F65 is a much better camera overall (and it was half the price), but it's not a digital camera, nor did we get them for the same reasons. We purchased the IXUS V3 for what I call "touristy pictures" - pictures that aren't overly artistic, but just to capture the moment.
The picture quality is among the best I have ever seen from a digital camera, but I'm no connoisseur of digital cameras. I find my F65 to have better quality, but nothing huge. We don't even use the full ability of the 3.2 mega pixels, and the quality is great without having huge file sizes. Currently we use 1280 x 1024 as our resolution, and typically can store about 60 images + a few short movies on our 132mb card.
We've only done one or two short little motion shots with the camera, as we just don't have much use for them. Sound is recorded rather well, but can only be heard when viewing through the television or computer, not through playback mode on the camera. Although I'm unsure of how long of a shot it can take, I believe it is somewhere around 5 minutes. Perhaps having this feature will one day prove to be useful for us, but currently pictures are all we want.
The small size & weight of the camera is also something that really makes this camera appealing. Depending on what you are wearing, it is possible to forget that you even have it on you, which can be a good thing. Size was the biggest factor in what we wanted, and we got what we wanted. Although it is small, the buttons are well spaced out and easy to use. The zoom is located as a ring around the shutter button, and is a nice setup. The only problem I've ever had is that since the power button is next to the shutter button, I turn the thing off instead of taking the picture.
Navigating the menus and options is all quite easy and straightforward. I had to read the manual to figure out what a lot of terms and icons meant, but after that things weren't too difficult to understand. The camera uses autofocus, and I've never had any problems with it that have required a switch into manual mode. There are a few effects that you can do, like sepia, b&w, tungsten, and the like - nothing that makes a major difference. The one thing I haven't been able to find is an option to alter the shutter delay, which is a feature that I'd like to have. There is an item called "Long Shutter" but it appears to make no difference. Perhaps it is right under my nose, but reading the manual and just messing around have failed to locate a fairly basic feature. Typically, I just don't touch the menu items, as I have no need, I just want to point and click. Only time I have messed around with options is when in playback mode, to set up a slideshow. Browsing the images is easy, zooming in narrows down the picture you want and will then take you so that you can see the picture at it's actual size, and zooming out will take you into a page mode. There is the typical 4-button up/down/side-to-side layout that you use to select the specific page/picture you want to look at. When in picture mode, they control items like flash and close-up/landscape mode. Changing it to close-up mode has never made a difference as far as I can tell, but you can still get some decent close-ups. Typically, adjusting any of the settings fails to make much of a difference as far as I can tell.
The menu system is quite complex, so rather than blather about each specific thing I suggest you just visit Canon's website where you can read an online manual that gives proper coverage of each of the areas. I think it is all well set up, and fairly easy to understand.
The battery tends to run down rather quickly, but it sounds about as good as any other digital camera. They take about 2-3 hours to charge, and are very easy to take in and out of the camera.
The software that came with the camera appears to be good, but I haven't had much of a chance to test any of it out. All I've had time to do is just download the pictures, and not test out PhotoStitch, RemoteCapture, PhotoRecord, or any of the other software, but it does look like it shouldn't be too hard to use. I didn't bother installing any of the Arcsoft software, as I'm quite familiar with Photoshop and would rather use it for any editing I may want to do. I had some trouble with the drivers automatically installing when you plug the camera into the USB port, but I just reinstalled everything and that did the trick.
The price is incredibly high as far as I'm concerned, as I feel that my F65 was half the price and a much better camera, but all good digital cameras are expensive. If we wouldn't have saved as much as we did by getting it in Singapore, I doubt we would have bought it.
I like the IXUS V3, not as much as my F65, but I still like it. It is great for its versatility, picture quality, and the ease to deal with. It is good camera if you are looking for something simple, but for serious photography it's not really a great option. As it is my first digital camera, I can't provide many comparisons to its true competition, but hopefully the information I have provided is at least of some use. If I haven't covered a certain detail that you want to know about, leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer it.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 550 aprox. This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Easy Enough for Anyone to Use
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