Canon IXUS 105 user reviews

DAS1951 19 October 2010

Good: Intuitive, easy to use

Bad: No optical range finder

Comment: In addition to my (lengthy!) review already submitted. For some reason the summary did not appear yet.

DAS1951 19 October 2010

Comment: Part 2/cont...


For me a factor in favour of the Nikon was its charging system. It is charged by direct, bog-standard USB cable, which can be plugged into a computer or the mains via a special plug. Less gear to carry around on trips. (And, I was told, its battery is actually common to several brands.)
For some people that might be a disadvantage as they might like to charge a battery while using another. Interestingly, the Canon charging 'stand' is inferior to that of my old Minolta Xt, which could accept the camera AND a battery. The Canon Ixus stand only takes a battery.

The Canon camera looks good and lies more easily in the/my hand than the Coolpix. It has plenty of features to satisfy my snapshot requirements (having ditched fancy SLRs years ago) and I certainly don't mind it being "conservative" in its feature set.

Although I would not 'chuck the Nikon out of bed,' overall I am so far very satisfied with my choice.

DAS1951 19 October 2010

Good: Intuitive and easy to use

Bad: No optical range finder

Comment: A few days ago I bought one... actually a 107, the Jessops special edition. I would rather have had the previous model (Ixus 90?) with the optical range finder, but it was no longer available from Jessops, though having been on its website only a few weeks earlier. The only significant difference between that one and the current is 2 MP, which I don't really need. 10 MP were quite sufficient.

Plus, omission of optical range finders seems to be the trend among all manufacturers, no doubt in their bid to show off with ever-increasing screen sizes, power consumption notwithstanding.

Good thing I broke my habit and did not read reviews, thinking I can't go far wrong with Canon...

It seems to me the relatively poor Editor's Review result (3 stars) hinges around the relatively high price. My price had already gone down to GBP 129.00 and I had a Sandisk Ultra 8 GB SD card and a decent leather case thrown in, so the package was not unreasonable (I had set a GBP 100 limit for the camera).

Perhaps Rod Lawton would give it another 0.5 to 1 star at the lower price?

I spent ages agonising whether to buy the Ixus or a Nikon Coolpix S3000, very similar in spec but significantly cheaper (but I did not explore whether the store would have given me the same deal).

So far I have taken only a few pictures but have explored the camera menus, having read only the supplied Getting Started instructions.

The on-screens menus are clearly laid out and easy to read, and the buttons at the back are labelled black on light blue, making them easy to see in all lighting conditions. On the Coolpix they were lightly engraved in the shiny ring. Whilst potentially slightly classier-looking I found the symbols difficult to see even in the shop.
(TBC)