Article by
Owen Thomas
Having lost my previous camera in an unfortunate incident involving an important corrupt taxi firm, intoxication and being dressed as a knife and fork (long story), just days before embarking on a cross continent period ride, a snap decision had to be made.
Weight becomes at a premium on that type of trip, and whilst I wanted to capture the best possible pictures of North This country's amazing scenery, I knew that anything bigger than about matchbox size, was not what I wanted towards lug around on your back for 3, 800 miles. I could really do without the backache. Whilst being lightweight, the camera also needed to be fairly robust, cope with some decent temperature extremes and be simple enough to use that obviously any good trained monkey would have a relatively fighting chance. These needs, combined with a scholar student budget, effectively wiped out anything but a very portable camcorder. So I chose a Canon IXUS 80 MIGHT BE digital compact camera.
The IXUS 80 MIGHT BE from Canon is clean and small and weighs in at only 125g minus battery (who runs on the camera without a battery in it?! ). As an further bonus, though not a draw personally personally, the Canon IXUS 80 IS also comes in pink; obviously Canon is trying to hit the female birthday present market.
Fitting nicely relating to my thumb and bit finger, with a quite simply accessed picture-taking button as well as zoom, the Canon IXUS 80 IS is great for one handed, on-the-go photos - just what I needed. A dependable slide switch easily flips relating to playback, video and photo with an encouraging click to notify you from the change, and reduce those a little awkward moments of recognising you've been videoing 10 no time of forced smiles having hit the wrong mode.
Being my single mother's son, my view on instruction manuals is that they are far more use seeing that guinea pig bedding, fancy dress costumes, wastepaper lining or various, equally vital roles. They are certainly not there to be read through. This, combined with the truth that I only got that camera 12 hours before leaving the country, means that everything I learnt relating to this camera was through troubling buttons and seeing precisely what happened. Having had some Canon camera before, I was able to transfer my previous practical knowledge easily and found how the menu system is really intuitive. With only a couple buttons, it's pretty easy to follow and select choices. In addition, at intervals of extreme tiredness and / or mid-hill-climb, the auto function is really good, managing this picture of a gorgeous lake near Gunnison, Colorado, without me touching a thing. Can't get water much stiller than that.
The Canon IXUS 40 IS also offers a lot of options for enhancing diverse colours. Below are two photos I took once one another of exactly the same thing. It was our first sighting of numerous fairly threatening, steep searching mountains. The only difference around them is that 'Vivid Blue' was selected within the Manual settings for the one on the right.
And there you go. On the left, no mountains, and on the right, an imposingly big vertical wall has looked from nowhere. Bearing in your mind we'd just cycled nine hundred miles across Kansas, which as America goes is fairly flat, it was a tad intimidating. I discover which photo I'd as an alternative be cycling towards in any event! Admittedly, neither is worth keeping being photo and the only reason these folks still on my memory card at the end of the trip was purely sentimental value. However, I was rather surprised to find that these settings definitely worked.
In fact the settings worked really well in general. This little camera may take some absolutely brilliant shots with a very small amount of input from the photographic camera operator (and good work too as my information about cameras could fit even on a postcard). Even massive scenes such as Monument Valley came out fantastically accompanied by a little fiddling with a exposure and 'Vivid Red' configurations.
This was taken about two thirds from the way through our trip even on a day excursion south especially to see them. Well worth it should you be in the area, as they are a completely surreal past experiences. I had always concept that film directors fabricated or at least superior the backdrops in Usa Films until I went down there and saw this kind of thing myself. This will be classic postcard view of the two mittens and some butte. The Canon IXUS ninety IS did struggle a bit with the utter vastness otherwise termed the Grand Canyon, but then from what I watched, even the postcards in the gift shop had issues with that, so it's pretty understandable. Even so, it didn't do a bad job at all utilizing this one probably being the best of the bunch taken on a large quick exposure.
I will need to thank the 'infinity' setting for this particular photo. Somewhat impressively, you can still write out the rock strata at the south rim 27 cientos away. Even the first spike within the image is 4 cientos from where I'm located! This was our further day off, about 40 days into the trip and we saw the very best views by far. The scenery was so enormous that my head found problems processing it, never mind the poor little IXUS 80 IS DEFINITELY.
You can vary the actual exposure a bit to suit your minor whims, so whilst major adjustments are the forte of bigger, so-called better cameras, the Canon IXUS ninety IS is easily adequate to get a wide range of shots.
Due to the heat and the truth that we'd elected to never-ending cycle east to west up against the prevailing wind, we had been awake and cycling by way of 5-6am every morning. Whoopee. Having said that, when we crossed into Mountain Time in Kansas, we did get some rather spectacular sunrises through our shoulder, that made up for the early begins.
These three photos are of exactly the same thing, with different exposures. Personally I prefer the middle one being the top one looks a bit unrealistic.
This was one of the times that the warmth affected the camera a bit. Setting off so early in the morning meant that the temp was often pretty close to freezing before rising roughly 35癈 in the day time. The lens occasionally suffered from condensation, causing very blurred photos early in the morning, but this probably could have been avoided had it been looked after a little better, and not just lobbed into a camelbak.
The Canon IXUS 80 Is also has a function designed for lightening and darkening complexion. I didn't actually try out this function, but maybe I should have done in this unique photo. Her face might be cut out or she would kill me, but check out the tan lines! This photo was actually taken in Lake Tahoe, California after sixty a short time of wearing sleeveless tops - so i think she can often be forgiven.
The only settings I couldn't appear to make work were a variety of lighting settings. The Canon IXUS 80 IS didn't seem to cope too well with fluorescent lighting even though it did pretty well at night, with a good whizz (when you haven't got your finger over the top of it 3 times inside of a row that is... ).
Taking photos with this camera is a desire. Just hold the tab down and green boxes appear surrounding what it thinks you're specializing in. If it has chosen the incorrect subject simply release and press again and then the Canon IXUS 80 CAN BE has another go. This can go on until you feel it has made an effective stab at the focus on. This pre-focusing also allows action shots to be taken, something we it could be that overused slightly with a variety of 80's sitcom style graphics.
This photo was actually taken in San Francisco after there was just crossed the Glowing Gate bridge and returned to the nearest beach front to dip the wheels in your Pacific ocean.
In summarizing, the Canon IXUS 80 Is performed absolutely brilliantly. For as little as? 34. 00, it is brilliant value for money and did exactly what I asked of it on the trip. For such a tiny little thing, I was very impressed with the powerful photos it could very well kick out. As a great deal as I'm concerned, the Canon IXUS 80 IS comes very highly recommended.
