Home > Consumer Reviews > Canon Digital Ixus 300 [2.1MP 3xOptical]

I bought the Ixus 300 to replace a much bulkier Kodak DC260 and would recommend the Ixus to anyone. While another reviewer complained that the camera is slow to take a photo, I've not found this to be the case. Moreover, the Ixus is ready to shoot within a second of hitting the power button. My old Kodak would take nearer 10 seconds to prepare itself to shoot... Unless you're a professional, don't buy a digital camera that won't fit into your pocket. The big cameras end up left at home. You can take the Ixus everywhere. If you buy the Ixus, get yourself a 128mb compact flash card to go with it... 128mb can hold roughly 128 highest-res photos. The rechargable battery will easily take 128 photos per charge. Mac users: the software works fine under classic in Apple's new OSX.

I am currently travelling around South America and have found my digital Ixus invaluable. As someone who hates lugging around a huge camera, the Ixus slips into pockets easily and takes superb quality pictures I have not found a huge difference between the lowest resolution and the superfine resolution exept when you try and blow images up to poster size. I have two 64mb memory cards and am managing to get around 250 images on a card (of mixed resolution). Battery life is a problem and I would recommend getting at least one spare battery. I get around 30 - 40 pictures per battery, less if you are using the flash. Tip: Battery life can be prolonged by switching the LCD colour display off

I've had Canon 35mm equipment in the past and although I couldn't quibble about the image quality, I wasn't impressed with the build quality and traded in for a good old manual Nikon F series, which will probably last longer than me. No quality concerns with this camera though, which is solidly built and feels almost like professional equipment (although I have to say that the smart money would still be on the Nikon in a one metre drop test).

The Ixus 300 creates images of excellent quality and I have no criticism of the camera, just of some of the software that comes with it. I couldn't immediately work out how to get a decent 640x480 jpeg for my website that was less than about 100k and the bundled Arcsoft software and its instructions weren't much help. The Arcsoft application is at best a toy for the most casual of users, although the Canon ImageBrowser is much better and is easy to use, but it is really a catalogueing program with fairly limited image editing capabilities. Certainly you will need something like PhotoShop or PhotoPaint to complement ImageBrowser.

On balance, the quality of the images produced by the camera really demands better software, which is why this gets 4 stars and not 5. I've seen better applications bundled with £100 scanners, and for what its worth I am using one of those packages with the Canon.

I have seen various user reviews on the internet complaining about slow shutter response, blurred pictures and other problems. I can't say that I've noticed anything like that with mine.

One other point. The bundled price is good, and you will certainly need the extra memory...

I bought the Canon Ixus 300 about a month ago and have used it far more than I would have used my 'conventional' 35mm camera. For a start it takes fine pictures at a massive 1600x1200 resolution which take up about 500k on the card with JPEG compression. The quality is superb, and it also has all the toys like timer delay, manual white balance, panoramic, flash options etc. The video mode is really useful, three capture modes are available and if you use each for the maximum time they use about 4MB each. It also has a built in microphone so the clips are complete with sound! (You will need quicktime to play them back on your PC though). I have found that with a 128mb card you can take more than enough pics and video from any trip. The USB cable connection is fast, and it only takes a couple of minutes to download even a full 128mb card. All in all a great product with enough features to keep any gadget freak amused for ages!

I've had this camera for 2 months now and I've taken 10 times more photo's than I ever did with my conventional camera, mainly due to the size of it (very small) and the speed at which it's ready to take photo's. Everyone I've shown it to is stoked with it as well. It is very easy to use while also allowing you to make manual adjustments like exposure times etc.. I've used the cannon internet site to get some photo's developed and people haven't been able to notice the difference between a digital and conventional photo.

The Software that comes with it is very good, my favourite is the photostitch program that takes a sequence of photos and 'stitches' them together producing a panaramic photo that is perfect.
Although you should get your hands on a copy of Paint Shop Pro 7 this has everything you need to really get the little bit extra out of your photos.

Using a 32mb flash card and with the camera set to take medium quality photos you can get about 130 photos on it. The battery lasts a fair while, over of a period of 3 weeks I recharged it 3 times (averaging about 10 photo's a day).

The movie mode is pretty cool as well, it only takes about 20 seconds but for such a small camera the quality is very good, but it's a 'still' camra so I don't use this feature much.

Fully recommend this to anyone who wants an easy to use camera they can take anywhere and want quality photos as an end product.