Canon Ixus 1100 HS review

The Canon Ixus 1000 HS was one of our favourite cameras of 2010. Its 10-megapixel sensor, 10x zoom range and 1080p video recording were a great combination of features, and the resulting photos and videos were the best we’d seen from a big-zoom compact camera.

Canon isn’t one to rest on its laurels, though, and the 1100 HS bears little relation to its nominal predecessor. The sensor is now 12 megapixels and the lens has a 12x zoom, giving some useful extra extension at the wide-angle end to deliver a 28-336mm range. Its dimensions are marginally smaller but it’s actually a little heavier, and the 1000 HS’s rounded off corners have been filled in to give a blockier appearance. Still, at just 22mm thick it’ll slip into any pocket. There’s only a small improvement to battery life, though, which now stands at 170 shots. That might not be enough for a day’s use, particularly if the 1080p video mode is used extensively.

The biggest changes are on the back of the camera, with the 1000 HS’s 3in screen, buttons and wheel replaced by a 3.5in touchscreen. The remaining buttons are for power, shutter release, zoom, playback and a switch to choose between Auto and other shooting modes – the switch has just two positions so all other modes are selected via the touchscreen controls. There’s not even a dedicated video capture mode or a dedicated record button, but the latter is always available as a touchscreen button.

The widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio isn’t the most obvious choice for a camera that takes 4:3-shaped photos, but Canon uses the blank strips either side of the preview image to display various on-screen buttons. Meanwhile, tapping the preview image itself moves the focus point, engages track focus or focuses and takes a picture, depending on the selected menu option.

Sadly, this smart use of the touchscreen runs dry when browsing the menus, which display options as a scrolling list in the same vein as the button-operated Ixus cameras. For touchscreens, a grid of buttons is much easier to operate that a scrolling list. We initially found menu navigation painfully slow, and although we got better at it with practice, it never felt entirely comfortable. Because the menu options don’t all fit on the screen at once – and because they can change depending on the selected mode – locating a particular function often involved looking for it rather than jumping directly to it.

The 1100 HS also committed a cardinal sin by sometimes failing to respond clearly to our input. It powered up and took a photo in 3.3 seconds, but powering up and responding to touchscreen prods took 4.5 seconds. Pressing the screen a little earlier produced an audible beep to show that it had registered our finger but nothing else happened.

Shot-to-shot times were on the slow side for such an expensive camera, averaging 2.3 seconds. Continuous mode was better, though, at up to 3fps in bright conditions. There’s also a continuous mode with updating autofocus between each shot. Its 0.9fps performance doesn’t look good on paper, but leaving the camera permanently in this mode let us capture a string of shots simply by holding down the shutter button, effectively reducing the 2.3-second shot-to-shot time to 1.1 seconds.

Image quality is among the best we’ve seen from a compact camera – towards the centre of the frame, at least

With the same 12-megapixel back-illuminated CMOS sensor that we’ve seen on various other Canon compact cameras this year, it came as no surprise to find some beautiful photos coming out of this camera. Brightly lit scenes were captured with rich, smooth colours. When telephoto zoom positions or diminishing light demanded faster ISO speeds, noise levels remained impressively low.

The lens wasn’t quite up to the same standards, though, exhibiting slightly soft focus and chromatic aberrations towards the corners of frames. The centre was better but still not quite as sharp as from other Canon cameras that use the same sensor. These issues were pretty subtle but it’s fair to expect better from a compact camera that costs over £300.

Noise levels remain impressively low at higher ISO speeds but focus is a little soft towards the edges of the frame, and there are chromatic aberrations too (most visibly on the edges of the sheep’s leg)

Video quality was generally excellent, with a clean, sharp 1080p picture and superb optical stabilisation, but the 16-minute clip limit is a little frustrating. The stereo soundtrack was detailed and clear but the microphone picked up the zoom and autofocus motors in quieter environments.

The 1100 HS is currently available for pre-order for £350, but we expect the price to come down when stock is widely available. However, it’ll need to drop considerably for it to be a more attractive prospect than the Nikon S9100 or Canon Ixus 230 HS, both of which narrowly surpass the 1100 HS for image quality with their sharper lenses, and offer more conventional controls that we found much easier to use.