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As always I start in Auto mode and right from the first image you know that you have hold of a more than decent unit.
It is 9.5x5.3x2.2cm the last figure when closed this can increase by another 3cm when the unit is fully zoomed. It weighs 126grams.
The whole point of an IXUS camera is ‘ease of use’ and by default it starts every time you switch on in ‘Easy Auto’ mode, however once you know a little more switch it off via the Menu and start to appreciate what it has to offer.
L M1 M2 and S are image sizes, 20MP, 10MP, 3MP and VGA, as far as video goes there are two options HD and VGA.
While you do not have many options this is perhaps a good thing for a novice and the camera will always make the best choice based on available light and other conditions. However you can stop things like flash firing once out of ‘Easy Auto’ you can also experiment with continuous shooting mode which for fast moving objects will probably manage to get the image you were after.
The right side has a rubber strip with wrist strap anchor point and Audio Out behind the strip. The left side is clear. The base has a tripod screw and the solid battery door behind which is where you insert any SD card you use. The face has the retractable lens and the flash mounted above and to its left this can never be nearer than 3cm to the lens. A tip for the novice when in portrait mode try shooting with the flash both above and below the lens to see which way gives the best result for the individual image. The way shadows fall can give a totally different take on the same subject.
The top has a small on/off button and the larger shutter release which has the wide angle / telephoto control around it.
This leaves the back which is dominated by the 5.5x4cm TFT screen to the right of this are two pairs of well-marked buttons with the ubiquitous five position joystick control between them.
The IXUS of today has little – apart from ease of use – in common with the IXUS of ten years ago simply because a lot of its features such as face tracking were only available then on the top of the range DSLR units this then filtered to entry level DSLR and then to PowerShot and now you get features that only a few years ago were only on professional units.
Capturing a screen of text in such clarity that it can be translated with OCR software was the stuff of spy movies not so long ago.
This is a very nice entry level unit from Canon one of the top names in cameras, while most decent phones can take perfectly respectable images and videos a camera can do it better.
The Canon IXUS 185 is available from Amazon for £99.99 with free delivery.
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