Canon IXUS 850IS Digital Camera (7.1MP, 3.8x optical zoom)
Average Customer Rating
(5.0 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
Most Helpful First | Newest First (5 out of 5)PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHERS REVIEW
I am a pro user, working in the travel and fashion fields, and i got this little camera to use personally when on holiday- my normal kit consists of a hasselblad and nikon digi slr, and i bought the ixus 850 cos i got sick of carrying my slr around with me when travelling! obviously the picture quality from a little compact can't be as good as an slr, but i have to say it isnt far behind. you can go to the n'th degree when reading these reviews and deciding which camera to buy i know, but i am very fussy when it comes to imaging as you can imagine, and i love this camera, so hopefully that will give you the push you need to buy it. the image stabiliser works ok, lens quality is as good as is needed, flash ok but limited of course, start up time rapid, screen good, little in the way of lens abberations which is pleasantly surprising in a compact, price good, overexposes a little in bright conditions so check your pics after shooting, battery life amazing! i treat my holiday snaps like a commission from national geographic (!), i like to come home with images that would slip into my portfolio, and this camera can do it. REMEMBER- its not what you've got, it's what you do with it!
(4 out of 5)IXUS 850is wide angled little wonder
I came to this camera from the Ixus 700 and Ixus 800 beforehand and i was persuaded to change by the promise of wide angle (28mm equivilent) photography. I wanted picture quality on a par with the previous cams and i must say after a week i have what i asked for!
The positives over the old camera are, 28mm wide angle, improved battery life (considerable over the older ixus 700 but around 10% over the ixus 800. The camera weighs 10% less than the ixus 800, has a better balance (although not quite as well built as the ixus 800) and has an improved LCD. There is also the added beneift of face detection focus and a better high iso performance over the ixus 800 (iso 400 very good, 800 usable, although forget iso 1600!).
The only downsides i can think of is that it has a slight tendency to overexpose in brigh tlight and needs exposure compensation set at -1/3rd in such circumstances but this is not unusual on these mini cams and that the corners suffer from slight softness at 28mm wide angle, however you won't notice this on prints upto 7x5" and this again is not unusual unless you go the SLR...
So overall a great cam, not 5 stars because nothing is ever totally perfect in my world, but this is as close as it gets to a perfect compromise of quality and ability at this size and price.
(5 out of 5)IXUS 850 is - Serious WOW Factor
I wanted a compact digital camera offering quality lens, ease of use, wide angle capability, Image stabilisation and above all good picture quality with enough pixells to allow cropping and enlarged picture size of 16x12 inches.
Research boiled down to two contenders, Panasonic FX50 (just replaced with their new FX30 range) and the Canon Ixus 850 IS. Of all the reviews I read I could find little to choose between them so made a trip to the local shop to see first hand. Whilst I liked the 3 inch viewing screen and Leica lens on the FX50 my personal preference was for the Ixus as I found it easier to hold and having previously owned an Ixus 400 was marginally biased in that direction. Holding the 850 just confirmed my choice.
Chose AllCam to supply because of their near 100% customer satisfaction record (and a very good price to boot), ordered on Tuesday after the Easter Bank Hol and received in the Isle of Man on Friday morning all intact and raring to go - AllCam's service was very good indeed and they kept me informed of order progress by email each step of the way.
Initial impression is that of a very smart, stylish camera, well made with a solid feel about it. The camera will work straight from the box in auto mode, point, press, shoot and forget if that is what you want but it also does an awful lot more.
Charged the battery and slipped in a 1Gb SD card and I was away. The start up time from switch on is very vey quick as is the time lag between pressing shutter button and picture being taken - a huge improvement on the Ixus 400 which used to annoy intensely. Focussing is also very quick and that face recognition thingi is spooky to say the least but very useful.
Over the weekend I really put the camera through its 7 Mega pix paces, almost abused it with what I was asking it to do. The effective 28mm wide angle lense was so refreshing after the industry standard 35mm and the 3.8:1 optical zoom ratio gave a decent long rang as well. The smart digital zoom was a very useful feature to have for occasional use and even at 15x zoom the noise on the picture was acceptable paricularly in daylight shots. The macro facility was very easy to use and gave some amazing shots of the inside of flowers. The 'professional' technical reviews I read mentioned some distortion at 28mm wide angle, well they may be right, but it is absolutely minimul so much so that I doubt the vast majority of users would even notice.
Let me bung my criticisms in here - On my Ixus 400 I was able to set the 'manual' mode focus to default to centre spot focussing leaving the 'auto' mode to get an average from its 9 point fucussing system. Can't do that on the 850 and could only get the centre spot focussing by changing it via the menu settings which then effected both the auto and manual modes together. To be able to flick between 9 point focussing and central screen focussing is vey useful on occasion and I could not do it on the 850. The only other thing that peeved me was there was a slight tendency to pick up some red eye when using flash, nowhere near as bad as the Ixus 400 but still there - I could live with this though, no worries.
That said I was seriously struggling to find anything show stopping to critisise about the 850. Pictures were very sharp, colours vibrant and bold (I used to like Agfa colour film as opposed to Kodak and for those of us who remember Agfa was very strong on reds and blues) the immage stabilisation really worked, the layout on the rear of the camera leant itself to holding the camera easily without pressing the wrong buttons. Even the recessed on/off button had been thought about. The 2.5 in screen was very clear and easy to use. The rotary mode control was also much improved on the Ixus 400 (which was easy to accidently change).
Evening shots were simple without flash, noise (grain) was not particularly evident even in quite a dark room and the AE was so effective most of my indoor pictures were better without flash that with when doing a direct comparison.
Battery life was excellent, I hammered the camera on Saturday, took about 100 pics, used the flash quite a bit, zoomed in and out with impunity and spent a long while looking at the results of my endeavours on the screen and still it was not showing any low battery level warnings. Put another way for most people I suspect that one charge will be all you will need for a whole day and nights snapping without the need to consider buying a second battery to keep in reserve.
To summarise, this is a cracking little camera that looks the part as well. Would I recomment it - yes I would. Is it worth the asking price of 224 squids - In my opinion, yes it is. Am I glad I bought it - too right I am.
This is a very nice camera that has come of age and until Canon bring out a similar wide angle lense on a 10 Mega Pixel offering with Image stabilisation (neither of which the Ixus 900 has) then this takes some beating. Go for it, I would be very surprised indeed if you were disappointed.
Bruce
(5 out of 5)Superb pocket camera
Bought one of these just before a trip to the Far East. Amazon had the best "normal" price I could find - and after a friend's experience with Pixmania I would never buy there.
Decided on the 850is after a fair bit of deliberation, to replace our ageing and battered but much-loved Ixus 500. Looked at the Fuji f31 and assorted Panasonics. Any of them would have probably fit the bill for a small, quick, effective digicam. Chose the Canon over the others for three main reasons: we're familiar with the menu systems; it has image stabilisation; and it has a wide angle lens, which is ever so useful!
First impressions: it's a solid little thing with a lovely, bright screen.
The controls are pretty well laid out; we didn't get many fingerprints on the screen in use but a quick wipe with a trusty micro-fibre cloth took care of 'em.
We did wonder if the screen would be vulnerable to scratching so bought some cheap stick on covers - mixed blessing since bubbles are so hard to avoid with a bigger screen but at least it is protected.
The controls are generally excellent however the switch that rotates for camera, movies, playback, etc. is a little fiddly to start with. The menu system is excellent and getting to the various scene modes is a cinch.
I went to Jessops and tried a few cases there, then bought a Lowepro Rezo 15 here on Amazon at half the price, and it fits snugly. Very pleased with the case (didn't really like the Canon offering).
Battery life is great. One afternoon we took over 200 shots and it was still showing a third full.
Get a big SD card - as usual the supplied one is virtually useless (why do they bother?). We got a 2GB Viking card for under £20 here.
The portrait/landscape rotated image playback is a nice touch.
All in all, we're very pleased with it.
Oh, the photos? Well. It's quick and generally excellent. As usual, watch where the focus points are on screen. You can also see the rather spooky face detection thing in action!
The wide angle lens is fantastic. Those times when you just needed another step backwards to get the group in or whatever? Not so necessary now, and you still have a reasonable optical zoom too.
Image stabilisation. We took lots of low-light pics dawn, sunset, etc. and it was great.
No problems, no issues. I took my Panasonic FZ7 too, and the little Canon got more use...
It's all rather good. Actually it's great. Hence five stars.
(5 out of 5)Ixus 850 fantastic compact
This camera is great. Several hundred pictures have been taken on it since it was bought a couple of weeks ago and every one has come out correctly exposed and most have been perfectly focussed. So as a point and shoot it is the best I have seen. Its face recognition is very clever, works well and is far from being the gimmick I was expecting. I would only buy a camera with a wide angle setting and compared it with the Ricoh Caplio R5. The Ricoh camera has a brilliant zoom and the best macro I have seen in a ultra compact, but exposure especially with flash was not as good - so more dud pictures in less than ideal lighting situations.
The Canon feels good, looks good and has some features like its bright display, the way it auto rotates images when viewing, the face recognition that puts it ahead of the competition. Yes it would be even better if it had the zoom the Ricoh has and I don't particularly like the zoom control, but there have to be some compromises - so I am still giving it a 5