Digital SLRs are great for all-round picture quality, but they're bulky and difficult to carry around with you everywhere. So it's always handy to have a quality pocket digital camera to keep with you all the time.
Canon's Digital Ixus range is viewed by many as the benchmark for pocket cameras, and have been our models of choice on many previous occasions. We've also been impressed with the super-fast operation and colour of snaps from Fujifilm's compacts.
Fuji's latest top-of-the-range F40fd and Canon's new Ixus 70 have a similar base specification and both offer blazingly fast operation, 3x optical zooms with similar focal lengths, large 2.5in screens and quality metal shells. Other similarities include face-detection auto-focus, a raft of scene-based presets and very high, digital SLR-like ISO ratings. The 8.3-megapixel Fuji has a million or so more pixels than the Canon, although you're unlikely to notice the difference in print.
Both models are very compact, but neither of the cameras' dimensions in print quite prepare you for the substantial visible difference between them in size. Measuring just 85.9 x 53.5 x 19.4mm and weighing a mere 170g, complete with battery and SD memory card, the Ixus 70 will fit in your shirt pocket. Fuji's F40fd would be better suited to a trouser pocket, but it's still comfortably small at 95.7 x 59 x 23.3mm and reasonably light at 190g all in.
In something of a telling departure for Fuji, the F40fd sports a dual xD/SD-format memory-card slot, which is handy for the slightly cheaper and more widely available SD-format memory card. Also useful is the onboard 25MB, but the F40fd lacks the SD-HC compatibility of the Ixus, and loses out to that model's access to capacities of up to 8GB. That's enough to provide over two hours of 30fps SD-quality TV with the Ixus, though limited to two one-hour sessions, compared with a total of 30 minutes with a 2GB card in the Fuji.
Despite the smaller size, the body and controls of the Ixus 70 don't feel particularly cramped. Neither maker has scrimped on the quality of their screen; both display plenty of detail and boast generous viewing angles. They're pretty good in bright light, too, but the addition of a tiny optical viewfinder with the Ixus is welcome considering the small battery and shorter life.
The Fuji has an almost identical layout, save for an extra button and a shooting mode dial in place of a slider on the Canon. There's no optical finder, but the mode dial boasts the F40fd's arguably handier shooting modes.
While the Canon doesn't fail to please with the range of scene-based shooting options it offers, the Fuji has some additional modes that will appeal to enthusiasts, or indeed anyone hoping to take pictures in low light without flash. Neither model has direct control over apertures or shutter speeds, but the Natural Light and Anti-Blur modes on the F40fd offer a little more control over the usual scene-based presets.
In either mode, without the benefit of optical image-stabilisation technology, the F40fd opens the lens to its maximum (brightest) aperture and hikes sensitivity to shorten shutter speeds. Although either option can automatically increase sensitivity to the maximum ISO 2000, the Natural Light mode isn't quite so hasty in doing so. But, while this lessens the distracting colour blobs of noise, there's the expected trade-off with the likelihood of blur from camera shake.
We also found the Anti-Blur mode ramping up ISOs while closing the lens aperture for improved sharpness from the additional depth of field. This is logical, but the resulting increase in noise and lack of fine detail from high ISOs, while improved since earlier offerings, may still be disappointing for some users. We like the handy Natural Light & Flash mode though, where two shots are taken, one with high ISOs and the second with flash. Both are saved, so you can choose which you prefer at a later date.
Noisy images aren't restricted to the Fuji - Canon compacts don't share the same low noise characteristics of their digital SLR range. With ISOs up to ISO 1600 selected manually or to ISO 800 available automatically using the High ISO option, the Ixus is no less an offender. There are a handful of scene presets with the Ixus, though, oddly, they're not immediately available from the function menu, without additionally pressing the menu button.
An Indoor preset comes closest to the available light modes offered by the Fuji, but the flash is on by default, which is annoying. Although not as handy on a day-to-day basis, the Ixus 70 offers some neat shooting options, such as Panorama Assist (for use with the bundled software), Colour Accents for adding subtle hues, and an in-camera Colour Swap feature. Also neat is a novel Timelapse recording option, with a choice of capture rate at 0.5 or one frame per second.
Once you've mastered the layout, with its separate function menu and main menu, the Ixus appears to be the more logically laid out. Most of the camera's day-to-day features are selected from the function menu, but flash and focus options can be called up from the flush d-pad. We're not quite so keen on the layout of the menus found on the Fuji. Although improved over earlier offerings, when used with so-called Manual shooting mode, features are spread over two separate menus. It would have been simpler to combine them, like the Ixus.
Both models impress with their face-detection auto-focus, and it's fun to watch the detection points track anyone who moves slightly. Both the Fuji and Canon systems decide on the main subject, appearing to favour the closest to the centre, but both work well and adjust exposure and, if need be, flash to suit.
This can lead to overexposure and a loss of highlight detail with certain subjects, so some care is needed, but both systems are fast and pretty reliable in low-contrast scenes. If a face can't be detected, they will automatically switch over to conventional multi-point focusing. Both cameras are super-fast in operation and there's little between them, but from our Labs and real-life tests the Fuji had the slightest edge.
Focus accuracy was good indoors and out in both cases, and although the little 3x optical zooms produced sharp shots, the edges were slightly soft on the Canon and slightly more barrelled on the Fuji. We were expecting the picture quality to be good in both cases, but were still surprised by just how good the outdoor shots looked from the Fuji. In the past, Fuji's SuperCCD, with its octagonal-shaped photodiodes, produced sharp enough prints from their pixel density, but through interpolation lacked the fine detail of conventional sensors with a comparable number of pixels.
We're pleased to say the Fuji's detail is every bit as good as the Canon's, and images were almost devoid of the tell-tale artefacts. Colours were especially pleasing, with the Fuji looking a little more saturated as a result of the Canon's slightly lighter looking files. Like most Fujis, though, the F40fd has very limited image-parameter settings, making it difficult to alter anything other than saturation. The Canon's settings maybe buried, but with the Fuji if you don't like the look of images out of camera there's little you can do about it.
Automatic fill flash was good, though neither offer manual flash compensation for fine-tuning the exposure of the subject, which is a shame given their high ISOs. Indoors, we liked the results of the flash, but the Fuji and Canon both struggle with incandescent lighting. These are only slight niggles and both have custom white-balance options.
We found choosing between the two more difficult than with previous offerings from the makers. Certainly, one of the main highlights of the Fuji is speed of operation: start-up, focus and shot-to-shot times are all blisteringly quick and the image quality is undeniably good. Ultimately, we couldn't help feeling pulled towards the Ixus 70 for its small size, range of manual overrides and great pictures. It may be slightly more expensive than the Fuji, but anyone in need of a new, high-quality compact should look no further.
Verdict
Good camera with manual override function, but has poor battery life.
Author: Kevin Carter
MacUser Online