August 3, 2009

Full Featured Under The Gloss
By Luis Anthony G. Oliveros
Published in the May 2009 print edition of PC World Philippines

Canon IXUS 110 IS
P23,950
www.canon.com/ph

Barely two months after it was launched along with other point-and-shooters in Canon’s stable of digital cameras, the Canon IXUS 110 IS has stepped up to the platter with nice specs, good image output and a compact body. Simplicity is obviously the main design principle implemented here, subtly complemented by well-rounded corners and sides that taper softly towards the edges. These are further augmented by an eye-catching glossy faceplate that comes in pastel shades of pink, blue, silver and old with a dull silver rear and matte black sides balancing the general look. Chrome-plated buttons and lens rings complete the cam’s overall accoutrement.

The controls at the back have also been kept to a minimum with just the Menu and Gallery buttons flanking a ribbed five-way click wheel for navigation and for tweaking settings through the cam’s GUI. Interestingly enough, it also has a built-in accelerometer which shifts between panoramic and portrait screen orientations in both photo and video playbacks and lets you navigate the gallery by flicking the cam upward or downward.

The absence of the deluge of buttons crowding the rear provided enough space for Canon to slap a 2.8-inch LCD screen onto it. It displays clear images with vibrant colors and has a scratch-free coating with a matte finish that prevents reflections; this along with the sufficient brightness settings make the cam ideal for outdoor use. In this case, it would be a good idea to stock up on SD, SDHC, MMC, MMCplus or HC MMCplus cards because this compact cam doesn’t have any actual internal storage.

Naturallly located at the top is the shutter button along with the zoom ring around it, next to the power button and mode switch. This switch lets you toggle between shooting videos and taking still photos in either user-defined standard mode or in Auto mode, which lets the cam do all the tweaking by first analyzing the photo subject and its environment and then auto-selecting the optimum scene preset for best quality. And while the inclusion of this toggle is definitely not a new feature, it’s still a nice touch that contributes to the cam’s ease of use instead of having to dig through the interface just to switch shooting modes.

Its well constructed 97.9×54.1×22.1mm body feels absolutely solid and comfortable in your hand with the well rounded corners resting snuggly on the palm during use; especially since it only weighs a mere 145g. While it’s nowhere near being indestructible, its solidly built shell still feels sturdy enough to take on daily use; great if you;re doing a Project360 type of phlog activity or running around the Metro shooting videos for a school documentary or making a vlog. However, we also noticed that the glossy front panel could get slippery at times; securing the cam to your wrist with the included lanyard easily solves this minor issue.

The buit-in lens offers 4x zoom and includes optical stabilization, which means that the lens mechanism itself compensates for erratic movements. This works really well, sparing our deliberately shaken pics from ending up as blurry outputs.

There are 19 presets scene modes that include the usual array of options like Portrait, Night Shots and Digital Macro. These are joined by three interesting and useful ones like Color Accent, Color Swap and Stitch Assist that lets you create artistic shots. Color Accent lets you choose a particular color that would be retained while the rest of the hues would be flung to monochrome, nicely duplicating the effect so commonly utilized in movies like Sin City and indie art house byproducts. While Color Swap, quite meta, lets you choose a color and swap it with another; Stitch Assist creates a panoramic shot from a series of separately taken photos. Needless to say, we actually wasted time having fun playing with these features.

At the heart of this cam is Canon’s latest image processor, the DIGIC 4, which is also found in the brand’s latest slew of cameras including the EOS 50D and EOS 500D DSLRs. And one of the most significant benefits of this processor is the improved noise reduction which is a common snag when shooting in high ISOs. During our tests, we took photos with the highest ISO setting (1600) in a room with less desirable illumination and we saw this feature in effect. Not that all traces of noise were removed, there are still a smattering present, mind you, but not enough to obscure image details and are only visible when you zoom at higher magnifications.

Powering up the 110 IS i very fast; you’re good to go in less than a second. During use, there’s roughly a second of lag between shots and a few milliseconds past a second when using the Continuous Shots feature, which averages at six photos in 10 seconds.

With a 12.1-megapixel resolution, it’s suitable for making large print outs up to A4 (4000×3000), in addition to handling smaller outputs such as postcards (1600×1200) and an e-mail suitable size (640×480). Indoor use yielded nice results with the warm tones prominently popping out of the shots, particularly the reds and the maroons. Cooler tones like the blues and the greens, on the other hand, are also well defined though not as rich as the other shades. We also noticed  that the blacks weren’t as dark or as bold as we liked. Tweaking the settings further remedies this, resulting in impressive photos with vivid hues and great detail definitions that cleanly displayed the gradients in the background.

Outdoor tests displayed the sky with a nice tinge of blue and the nearby trees looking lush; though the pale copper colored rooftops nearby looked a tad bit bland than they ought to be. Nevertheless, the photos still came out with good quality with the details cleanly defined.

Videos also showed the same high quality outputs at 30fps, from the smaller 320×240 and standard definition up to 720p. There are seven White Balance presets and 11 scene modes you can choose from. These include the customary Sepia and Black & White and is joined by the Vivid array of submodes aimed to give you enough leg room for enhancing our videos. Among these are the Positive Film feature geared to emulate the quality and color saturation produced when shooting in film. While the Vivid selection of submodes emphasize the contrast and boost saturation on specific colors to make them pop out of the scenes, Neutral does the exact opposite by reducing color intensity but still retaining quality.