Canon IXUS i Digital Camera, Platinum Silver [4MP]

I've got the bronze version and I think this looks the best, having seen all the other ones in the metal. This is a very small camera, about the size of a small mobile phone, so if you have hands like a gorillas, you would be better off with a larger model. My wife and I wanted a small camera with 4MP and being designers, wanted it to look stylish too. The ixus i fits the bill on all counts. It comes with all the cables you will need to connect to your computer and there are couple of software CDs aswell. Talking of connecting to computers, after charging the battery and taking some test shots, I connected the ixus via the supplied USB cable to my Apple iBook, without installing any of the supplied software, iPhoto started automatically and it identified the make and model of the camera and gave me the option of importing the photos. Seriously easy and smooth. Now the most important part, picture quality, as designers we will use our camera professionally from time to time. The highest res is 2272x1704 pixels which is results in a 1.3Mb jpeg or 11Mb uncompressed Tiff on the iBook. This allows high quality print outs up to A4 size.
Any downside, well it would be nice to find a case in the box, we are still using the bubble wrap sleeve it came in and the wrist strap should be a metal chain not low rent material one supplied, but that's about it!
We still have our SRL, but the ixus i is a great little gem and once you see, feel and touch it you, and your friends will understand that you must have this camera!

The camera seriously is tiny! it easily fits in all my pockets and i can hardly tell when its in them! it is smaller than my phone. The build quality is really good, its all metal, and feels very solid. it is a good weight, not too light but heavy enough to feel sturdy. it does also look very cool! i have the silver one, but all the colours it comes in are cool.

The battery life is very good, lasted a weekend of impulse snapping and reviewing and taking videos.

Here are some details about the things that matter..

Photos can be extremely good in the right conditions. Out side they are really very good, colours are bright and light metering works a treat. lots of manual options too if you know best.inside in darkish conditions i have sometimes been disapointed but i think this is the case with most didgi cameras. sometimes it struggles to focus and pics can be underexposed or blurred. On the whole though they are normally very good, and no doubt as good as all the cameras this price. Also fairly often get light spots a bit like lens flair in indide photos. Was worried about the lack of optical zoom but on a 4MP camera this will not matter often. didgi zoom is good up to a point but when zoomed in 5x you see drop in quality big time

Videos are really good for 320 * whatever it is. very crisp for what they are and you even get sound which is a big advantage over some others.

32mb card provided which is better than most for this price but i bought 128mb which is plenty!

the software it came with is really really good, and installed fine.

if you are looking for a camera in this price range and you need it for the same reasons as me (small and versatile) i can assure you this is top choice.