Canon Digital Ixus 750

(Canon PowerShot SD550 in the USA)

Review Date: November 21st 2005

Features

The Canon Digital Ixus 750 has a 7.4 megapixel, 1/1.8 inch CCD that delivers 7.1 effective megapixels. There are 3 image quality size settings available (Superfine, Fine and Normal) and 5 image size settings ((L)3072 x 2304, (M1)2592 x 1944, (M2)2048 x 1536, (M3)1600 x 1200, (S)640 x 480), which are recorded as JPEGs. There are no RAW or TIFF formats. The camera's 3x optical zoom lens is equivalent to a 37-111mm lens on a 35mm format camera. There is also a 4x digital zoom should you feel the need to use it. The camera is supplied with a 32Mb Secure Digital (SD) Card and also supports MultiMediaCard (MMC) memory cards. The Canon Digital Ixus 750 is available in silver.

The Canon Digital Ixus 750 offers Auto and Manual exposure modes plus 9 different scene modes (Portrait, Foliage, Snow, Beach, Fireworks, Underwater, Indoor, Kids & Pets, Night Snapshot). The maximum aperture is f2.8 (wide) – f4.9 (tele), and the shutter speed range is 15 secs. – 1/2000 sec. There are 4 ISO speeds ranging from 50 to 400 and an Auto option. There are 5 different White Balance presets to choose from (Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H), plus Auto and Custom settings. The camera offers exposure compensation in ± 2 in 1/3 EV stops. The Canon Digital Ixus 750 offers 3 different auto-exposure metering options - Evaluative, Centre-weighted average and Spot (centre).

The Canon Digital Ixus 750 has a normal shooting mode, Self-timer (2 secs. 10 secs. or Custom) and a Continuous mode, which allows you take up to 2 frames/sec until the memory card is full. There are a number of different photo effects on offer - Vivid, Neutral, Low Sharpening, Sepia, Black & White, and My Colors (with 9 settings). The Macro setting allows you to focus on subjects that are as close as 5cms. The camera offers 2 auto-focusing systems - 9-point AiAF and 1-point AF (Fixed centre). You can also one of the 3 focus modes- Normal, Macro and Infinity. The built-in flash offers 5 different modes (Auto, On, Auto Red-eye Reduction, Slow Synchro, Off). The flash range is 50cm-5.0m (W) / 3.0m (T). An AF assist beam and Flash Exposure Lock are also available. Noise reduction is automatically applied to exposures greater than 1.3 seconds.

To compose your images, you can use the LCD monitor or the optical viewfinder. The Canon Digital Ixus 750 has a 2.5 inch colour TFT LCD monitor which has 115,000 pixels and which offers 100% scene coverage. Brightness is adjustable to one of fifteen levels. The Canon Digital Ixus 750 can record movies with sound at (L)640 x 480 at 30/15fps, (M)320 x 240 at 60/30/15fps and (S)160 x 120 at 15fps. Video is recorded in the AVI Motion JPEG format. The length of the video is only limited by the size of the memory card that you are using. You can also attach a 60 second or less sound clip to an image. A histogram is available in playback mode. The Canon Digital Ixus 750 supports the DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) and PictBridge printing standards, and it connects to a computer via USB 2.0.

The Canon Digital Ixus 750's dimensions are 89.5 (W) x 27.4 (D) x 57 (H) mm, and it weighs 170g without the battery and storage card fitted. The camera is powered by a rechargeable Li-ion Battery which allows you to take up to 150 shots before needing to be recharged. There is a metal tripod mount in the center of the bottom of the camera.

Finally, the standard box kit contains a rechargeable Li-ion Battery, Battery Charger, AV Cable, USB Cable, Wrist Strap, 32Mb SD Memory Card and a CD-ROM containing Canon software(ZoomBrowser EX (PhotoRecord), ImageBrowser, PhotoStitch, TWAIN Driver, ArcSoft PhotoStudio). Note that you can only store 9 images at the highest quality setting on the supplied 32Mb memory card. You will therefore need to invest in some more memory cards to store your images on.

PhotographyBLOG is a member of the DIWA organisation. Our test results for the Canon Digital Ixus 750 have been submitted to DIWA for comparison with test results for different samples of the same camera model supplied by other DIWA member sites.

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