Canon IXUS 110 IS digital camera

The Canon IXUS 110 IS is a great example of a high quality point-and-shoot digital camera. It makes some sacrifices in size and weight, but the end result is a sturdy and well-constructed 12.1-megapixel (Mp) digital camera that takes images with plenty of detail and vibrant colour.

Like the IXUS camera models of old such as the Canon IXUS 70 and the Canon IXUS 90 IS, the Canon IXUS 110 IS is user-friendly. It may have a slightly confusing control interface for novices and IXUS stalwarts — eschewing the good ol’ fashioned D-pad for a combination D-pad scroll wheel — but the on-screen menus are intuitive and easy to navigate.

There is no facility to manipulate camera shutter speeds or aperture stops though; the Canon IXUS 110 IS takes control of those itself. To its credit we did not notice it stumble on these points: images always looked well-suited to the conditions they were shot in. Macro shots, for example, default to the lowest f2.8 aperture for less camera shake and shorter depth of field.

The Canon IXUS 110 IS has a 4x zoom lens with a wide angle of 28mm — good enough for group photos at short distances — with a maximum zoom of 112mm. This is a little short for our tastes. It largely relegates the Canon IXUS 110 IS to short-range party duties unless you are happy to crop your pictures and take advantage of the 12.1Mp sensor. Thankfully, the lens is built to a high standard, with no barrel distortion at full zoom and only a very small amount of chromatic aberration noticeable when closely examining high-contrast photographs. For printing in any size smaller than the camera’s recommended A2 maximum, you won’t notice any image issues.

Image quality was superb. Our test pictures were consistently sharp and clear, while colours were vibrant and well-balanced. The camera’s Vivid colour setting adds a little more saturation to colours but does not lose much high-contrast detail in the process. ISO speeds above 400 — the Canon IXUS 110 IS can shoot at up to ISO 1600 — produced small amounts of image noise but the camera’s optical image stabilisation and fast lens mean these are rarely necessary.

The Canon IXUS 110 IS handled bright and cloudy conditions well in our outdoor shooting. Low-light indoor photography was also largely trouble-free. Photos taken with slow shutter speeds of up to 1/8th of a second were acceptably sharp thanks to the on-board image stabilisation, while the in-built flash lights up medium-sized rooms with no difficulty. We did find that the flash, which is built in to the upper right of the camera’s face, was easy to accidentally cover with a finger when shooting photos, resulting in underexposure. Of course, this may be attributed to the giant ham fists of the reviewer.

It is also a quick camera, starting up in just over one second. Shot-to-shot in single photo mode takes under two seconds, while the burst mode captures a shot every 0.8 seconds. It uses an SD card for storage and changing out the card is easy if you run out of space. Along with the standard mini-USB connector for PC transfer there is an HDMI port, which allows playback of footage captured by the camera’s 720p high-definition video mode on supported LCD or plasma television sets.

The camera was larger than we were expecting; it's just over 22mm thick. The 2007 7.1Mp Canon IXUS 75 was under 20mm thick. It is still thin enough to slip into a jacket or jeans pocket when travelling. It is also slightly heavy for a compact point-and-shoot camera, coming in at 145g with the battery included. The screen is an acceptable 2.8in. It has a 16:9 format, so black bars appear when taking standard 4:3 photographs.

All up, the Canon IXUS 110 IS is a great benchmark for compact point-and-shoot cameras. It may be on the pricy side but it takes great photos.