Canon Ixus 400

Canon's digital IXUS cameras have always been small and nicely designed but this new model, the IXUS 400, is the smallest yet. It is about the size of a pack of playing cards, though a little taller, and should fit into pretty much all but the tiniest pockets. With a case of protective stainless steel, it has the looks that have made the rest of the IXUS family so popular.

The IXUS 400 is not just about show, though - this four-megapixel camera has a 3x optical zoom and can take pictures at resolutions up to 2272 x 1704. Image quality was excellent in our test but the downside of such high resolutions is that the supplied 32Mb CompactFlash card fills up very quickly indeed.

There seem to be a lot of buttons around the casing of the IXUS 400 but a few minutes use is enough to work out what everything does. Most of the functions you'd want to use - such as the zoom, macro mode for taking close-ups, the flash settings, the auto-timer and the picture quality settings - are only a click or two away. We barely had to refer to the manual to get going, although when we did use it, it was simple to decipher.The supplied battery is removable so it can be quickly swapped for a spare if you lose power when out and about.

There are plenty of extra features for photo enthusiasts to take advantage of but simpler photographers can get away with ignoring them. Variable shutter speeds are a good for fine-tuning photographs. The Stitch Assist mode shows the previous image in the display to help you take panoramic shots, which can be assembled into one large photo on your PC using the supplied software. Users can also add voice clips to images and short capture movie clips if a still image won't tell the whole story. A fun feature is the customisable sounds and start-up images for the display.

Contact: Canon 08705 143723
www.canon.co.uk

Also Consider:
Samsung Digimax V4
A stylish, great value camera at £350.