Although the Canon IXUS 430 lacks the manual controls that serious photographers demand, as well as the scene modes and the high-res video capture that some of its competitors offer, it has enough shooting options to please those in the point-and-click crowd who just want a good basic feature set and high-quality snapshots. Replacing the very similar Canon IXUS 400, this 4-megapixel shooter's major new feature is a Print & Share button for easier direct printing.
Design
The Canon IXUS 430 's stainless-steel and metallic-plastic body is studded with more controls and indicators than a luxury SUV, but they're logically arranged and easy for the point-and-shoot photographer to access. At 87mm by 57mm by 28mm and 230 grams with battery and media installed, this Digital IXUS model just makes it into the ultracompact camera category.
The top surface sports a microphone, a speaker, a power-indicator LED, a shutter release encircled by a zoom lever, and an on/off button that's recessed to prevent powering down by accident. You can trip the shutter and operate the seven-step zoom lens with just your forefinger, which makes one-handed shooting easy.
Mastering the controls arrayed on the back panel may take a little practice for novices. The four buttons below the 1.5-inch LCD include a Function key that summons one set of menus for adjusting exposure compensation, white balance, ISO, colour effects, compression level, and resolution, as well as a Menu key to access a separate three-page system for other shooting and setup options. The Set key lets you make selections, while the Display button turns off the LCD or pulls up a roster of current settings. In playback mode, the Display key activates a histogram, too.
Features
If you're content to let the camera make the majority of shooting decisions most of the time, you'll enjoy the other features packed into the Canon IXUS 430. Its 36mm-to-108mm (35mm-camera equivalent) 3x zoom lens provides an acceptably wide perspective at the short end but only moderate magnification at the telephoto setting. Autofocus is effective from two inches to infinity, and the flash range extends from 0.5- to 3.3-metres at wide angle or two metres when you zoom in.
There are no aperture- or shutter-priority options, and manual mode doesn't give you a manual exposure option. Instead, it lets you set white balance; light sensitivity from ISO 50 to ISO 400; evaluative, center-weighted, or spot metering; and a long-exposure mode (up to 15 seconds). The lack of exposure controls is exacerbated by the fact that the IXUS 430 has none of the scene modes found in most other cameras in this class, so it doesn't offer programmed settings for common subjects such as sports and portraits. On a brighter note, there are macro and landscape focus modes, as well as slow-sync flash for night shots and a panorama mode.
On the plus side, this Canon uses a nine-point light-assisted autofocus mechanism to guess the point of interest, even if located off-center, and outlines the autofocus/exposure area with green boxes on the LCD. Standard center-point focus is available, too. Also cool is the camera's ability to optionally sense whether a picture was taken in landscape or portrait orientation, then display the shot right side up during review so that you don't have to turn the camera.
The modest number of effects includes Vivid Color, Low Sharpening, Sepia, and Black And White modes. Photos can be stored at one of three levels of JPEG compression; no TIFF or RAW format is available. You can also shoot up to three minutes of video clips with sound at 320x240 or 160x120 resolution, or you can create voice memos of up to 60 seconds.
Performance
Snapshot photographers will be pleased with the IXUS 430's overall performance. Start-up time to first picture was a little on the slow side at almost 5 seconds, but even with the camera in single-shot mode, we were able to snap off pictures every 1.8 seconds, or 4.6 seconds with the flash.
Under high-contrast conditions that allowed the autofocus mechanism to work quickly, shutter lag is a respectable 0.8 second. Canon's Quick Shot mode, which freezes the LCD view during autofocus, slashed shutter lag to 0.4 second. Under low-contrast conditions, even the PowerShot's focus-assist light couldn't reduce shutter lag to less than 1.8 seconds.
This camera has both low-speed and high-speed burst modes. The low-speed mode managed 5 shots in about 3 seconds at full resolution and minimum compression. The high-speed setting grabbed 132 shots in slightly more than a minute using the lowest 640x480 resolution.
The Canon IXUS 430's little optical viewfinder shows only 80 percent of the actual image and has no diopter adjustment, so we think people will prefer to use the LCD as a viewfinder. At 1.5 inches, the LCD is relatively small, but it shows 100 percent of the image and provides a clear view, even in bright light.
Image quality
Image quality is excellent, with appropriate exposures, pleasing colours, and broad tonal ranges under many different conditions -- even with tricky subjects. Flesh tones are also realistic, if a bit warm. Under incandescent lighting, the Canon's automatic white balance produces the same orange cast as all the rest of the IXUS and PowerShot series; just switch to the incandescent white-balance preset to get rid of it. Sharpness and image detail are excellent for this camera's class.
At lower ISO settings, our test images were clean and virtually noise-free; although noise inevitably increases at ISO 200 and ISO 400, it's not noticeable enough to mar your photos unless you make very large prints. The Canon IXUS 430 provides automatic noise reduction for exposures of 1.3 seconds or longer. Our test photos were free of most other flaws that affect digital images, with only minimal purple haloing in high-contrast areas near the edges of the image.
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