The Canon Ixus V3 comes with a 3.2megapixel sensor, an improvement over the 2megapixels of its predecessors but, besides that, little has changed.

This isn't a complaint, however; the Ixus has all the features you would require of a camera of its size and intended market.

The optical zoom is 2x, with digital zoom at 3.2x, running in 0.6x steps, operated via a rotating switch at the top. There's also a movie mode capable of 640 x 480 video capture.

The maximum resolution is 2,048 x 1,536, but due to the compression Canon places on the stored jpeg files, the largest file size is just under 1MB - a ratio of 11:1.

So you could get 16 1MB files on the supplied Compact Flash (CF) card, but images will suffer as a result.

That said, the images were excellent for a camera this size; objects were well defined and colours just saturated enough to feel real.

Look too close, though, and you may find a few grains spoiling an otherwise excellent showing.

Our major problem was with the automatic setting, as the shutter speed was way too slow, so we had to adjust it manually.

The menu is very simple to use though, laid out in typical list fashion, and white balance is given its own dedicated button at the back.

This is also true of the flash and macro modes, and timer release, though we would have preferred to have seen this dial slightly higher on the body as it's quite a stretch for a thumb to reach down to it.

On the downside, the digital out has a unique shape, so if you lose the supplied USB or video cables you'd have to buy the specific Canon cable, rather than popping into your local store for a generic one.

SPECS

£350 (£297.87 ex VAT)
Contact: Canon 08705 143 723
www.canon.co.uk