BIOS: Technology Means Business

Sitting at the top of Canon’s compelling ultra-compact Digital IXUS range, the IXUS 55 (Powershot SD450 in the US) features a new interpretation of the iconic ‘box and circle’ design. Sporting a unique and attractive starburst design radiating from the lens ring, the compact point-and-shoot camera and is finished in silver-white palladium plating on stainless steel. As ever, the functionality behind the 5-Megapixel Digital IXUS 55 (Best Current Price: £215/$277) is as impressive as the camera itself. It boasts DIGIC II processing, a 2.5-inch LCD monitor which occupies most of the rear of the camera, and a 3x optical zoom lens.

In addition to its compact size (86x54x22mm, 140g) and excellent picture quality, the camera’s 2.5-inch LCD is a defining feature. While retaining all the key controls and preserving a sleek and slim body, the LCD has wide viewing angles that make it easy to view and share images and movies during playback. It also makes it a snap to frame your shot and view menus, and is adjustable to 15 levels of brightness. New slideshow functions even allow the review of images with stylish and contemporary transition effects applied in camera.

The Digital IXUS 55 operates with 5.0-Megapixels, allowing you to produce quality photo prints up to A3 in size (2592x1944 pixels). Having said that, we wouldn’t really recommend going any larger than 8x10-inches, as the image tends to look a little soft. The camera’s high-quality lens is constructed with six elements in five groups and includes two Ultra-High Refractive Index Aspherical (UA) elements for true-to-life colours and crisp, high-contrast images.

Canon’s renowned DIGIC II processor further ensures that recorded images have superb resolution and colour quality, as well as giving improved camera performance overall. With 9-point AiAF, the camera automatically focuses on the subject, even when it is off-centre. iSAPS intelligence ensures that the camera assess the scene and adjusts the settings to achieve the optimum results.

Three methods of exposure control can be selected (evaluative, centre-weighted, and spot) and ISO can be set to Auto, 50, 100, 200 or 400. For rapid downloading of images, the Digital IXUS 55 includes a USB 2.0 Hi-Speed interface as well as an AV port for viewing images and video on a larger screen (all the necessary cables are supplied). The camera is PictBridge compatible, should you want to print independently from your computer, and support for SD/MMC cards (16MB SD card supplied) offers you a further option for image backup and storage. Printing of images is made simpler via the dedicated Print/Share button, which also acts as an easy upload button for Windows XP and Mac OS X users.

The Digital IXUS 55 offers a relatively wide range of photographic situations by providing 14 different shooting modes. A selection can be made from Auto, Manual, Portrait, Landscape and Night Snapshot modes, or from the scene modes that now include an underwater setting, allowing you to take full advantage of the optional All Weather Case (AW-DC50). Underwater mode adjusts the white balance specifically for underwater shots, allowing capture of the most authentic colours and helping to minimising any blue cast.

My Colors allows the expansion of creativity in digital photography. Special effects such as Color Swap or Custom Color, which allows you to select your preferred colour balance for any given shot, can be performed in-camera and viewed on the LCD while shooting stills and movies. These effects could previously only be achieved using PC software after shooting.

The Digital IXUS 55’s Intelligent Orientation Sensor recognises when the camera is rotated from horizontal to vertical, automatically rotating stored images for correct playback, and there’s optional display gridlines to help keep the camera level with the horizon and to assist with image composition. Other user interface options include a new world time zone display. This allows you to set home and destination country time zones, as well as animated displays and improved warnings for camera shake. The camera menu can also be displayed in 22 different languages.

Amazing considering the diminutive size of the camera, the Digital IXUS 55 can record short movies at either VGA and QVGA resolutions, and at either 30- or 15fps. Continuous filming is available until the file size has reached 1GB or 60 minutes - whichever is reached first. A fast frame rate of 60fps is available, allowing for slow motion playback.

Software supplied with the camera is useful and includes Canon's ZoomBrowser EX 5.5, PhotoRecord 2.2 (Windows) and ImageBrowser 5.5 (Macintosh) for image download, storage and retrieval, as well as management of image layout and printing. PhotoStitch 3.1 lets you create panoramas, while Movie Edit Task is used for editing movie footage. Also included is PhotoStudio, image-editing software by ArcSoft. While all of the programs can be bettered, they are nevertheless a welcome addition that will help you to get the best out of the camera from day one.

On-screen images and prints were very crisp in our tests. At high ISO, image noise increased somewhat, and the images softened as the camera tried to suppress the image noise. Thankfully, the Digital IXUS 55 managed the trade-off between noise and sharpness very well. When printed, ISO 200 shots looked a little soft but quite acceptable at 8x10-inches, and were very good at 5x7-inches. ISO 400 images were a little noisy but probably acceptable for most people at 5x7 inches, and looked great at 4x6-inches. Reds were a little oversaturated, but on the whole colour was really excellent without appearing the least bit artificial.

Canon’s Digital IXUS 55 is a great choice for many consumers, given its tiny size and great quality. Although exposure control is mainly automatic, the availability of exposure times as long as 15 seconds and adjustable ISO increases the Digital IXUS 55’s exposure versatility a great deal. The uncomplicated user interface and smooth styling help novices and more advanced amateurs alike feel at home, with enough control over the exposure to make both happy. Overall, it’s a great all-around camera for anyone, and would make a good second camera for enthusiasts who don’t want to lug along their bells-and-whistles digital SLR. [8.5]

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