Canon renews its line of small and attractive cameras with the Ixus 80 IS which especially stands out for its design and (finally!) optical stabilization.

Handling

If Canon’s new 2008 line of compacts seems a bit lean (only 4 new ones), its flagship model, the Ixus 80 IS, is extremely attractive and perfectly fits into the “compact and precious” category.  Compared to the previous version (Ixus 70), this new camera has slight curves but it keeps its rather clean rectangular design.  There is now an indentation (first appearing on the Ixus 960 IS) where your normally fingers are assuring a good grip.  The metal finish is very attractive; however, we felt the black plastic components clashed with the overall look.   The plastic (battery/card door, photo/video selection button) isn’t of high quality and is even a bit fragile.

The back of the camera was equally well conceived with a 2.5 inch LCD and buttons that are more or less flush with the surface.   This can be a bit odd in the beginning but in the end the camera is very easy to control.  The Ixus 80 IS has an optical viewfinder (rare and therefore quite amazing) which is imprecise although it can useful at times even if the LCD is of very good quality (excellent anti-reflective coating).  The display is precise (230,000 pixels) and very fluid even in low light situations (image has a lot of grain but fluidity is still good).  Color accuracy is also very satisfactory.  Canon’s menus are still as enjoyable and easy to use; however we did (still) miss an exposure bar when shooting.  Finally, this camera is very fast.  The Ixus 80 IS is operational in less than a second, focus is extremely rapid (even in poorly lit conditions), and face detection is prompt and efficient.  Only the recording time between two photos was a bit slow as well as the burst mode which attained a frustrating 0.7 i/s.

Image quality

With the Ixus 80 IS, Canon didn’t make any compromises on image quality.  The 8 MP sensor combined with the Canon 3x zoom produces sharp and very detailed images.  Shots were particularly precise in the middle and there was very little blurring on the edges of images, nothing too dramatic.  The Ixus 80 IS controls chromatic aberrations rather well (though they are visible) and purple fringes were quite rare.  In automatic mode, exposure is good and white balance appropriate to the situation.  Even in our studio under artificial lighting images were amazingly neutral.  There is high performance optical stabilization and we obtained the same speeds as with the Ixus 860 IS.  As for noise control, the Ixus 80 IS produces clean images at 80 ISO and they remain perfectly usable up to 400 ISO.  At 800 ISO quality is still satisfactory although colored grain is very noticeable. The flash is quite effective and from two meters our test Barbie was radiant, though a bit dark, and in the end it could have been a little more powerful.  The macro mode with focusing from 3 cm is impressive.  Finally, for video you can shoot in 640 x 480 (but no 720p as we could have hoped for!) with very good quality and clear sound.  Unfortunately, it’s not possible to use the optical zoom during recording.