Introduction

Ease of Use

The Canon IXUS 265 HS is well made, considering its price-point. It has a weight to it that keeps you aware of it's presence while shooting or sitting in your pocket. The tripod bush is metal for added durability and the only thing we'd liked to have seen is a lock on the battery cover. It snaps open, so isn't easily jostled while in a bag or pocket but there's also no metal on it, so it's more flexible than we're comfortable with. The thin lithium ion battery slots in alongside the SD memory card. Up to and including SDXC can be accepted in the 265 HS.

One area of the build we really like is the size and sturdiness of the zoom lens. A 12x optical zoom in a little body such as this one isn't seen a lot, but it's great. There's very little movement in it when waggled from side to side. We also like the screen that Canon have fitted to the IXUS 265 HS. It's a little bit too big for the body and sticks out but it's much better to see a large screen. It's bright, colourful and contrasty.

The curves of the case are only broken up by the occasional button and the 3 inch LCD screen – and only because it's too big for the back. In fact, the same goes for the lens but then it is a 12x optical zoom crammed into the thin plastic shell. It's perhaps a little disappointing that you don't get a touch-sensitive screen, but the standard 3.0” display does the job well. It's bright with decent contrast and great viewing angles. The 461k-dot resolution is nothing to write home about, but it isn't a deal-breaker either.

There are a number of interesting features on the IXUS 265 HS. The HS appendage denotes that the IXUS 265 uses Canon's High Sensitivity system. It's a combination of winning sensor technology and processor to make low light images (usually taken at high ISO with a lot of noise) look better quality. We mentioned previously about how the processor can help with the HS system. The Canon IXUS 265 HS has been fitted with a DIGIC 4+ processor. But what's different in the DIGIC 4+ processor from the older DIGIC 4? Quite a lot, says Canon. The 4+ is a sort of enhanced version of the 4. According to Canon, processing of high ISO shots has been shortened by 60%, allows for the integration of electronic Dynamic IS which compensates for multiple motion types, and also extends battery life.

Front	Rear

The ECO mode is a battery saving system that you have to enable in the Main menu. It's in the setup tab and you simply switch it to the On position to use it. This modest thirst for power is primarily achieved by dimming the display after just a couple of second's inactivity, and turning it off altogether shortly afterwards. Pressing any button will restore life instantly though. The effect is rather like a start/stop system on a modern car and doesn't seem to have any downsides, providing you don't have to wait more than a few seconds to take your shot. Why this isn't a standard feature (ECO all the time) is a bit of a puzzler, but then we'd complain about not having the option to take it out of ECO mode.

On top of the IXUS 265 HS is a 3-position switch that selects between Auto, Creative Shot and Hybrid Auto modes. For normal shooting you'll have this set to Auto mode, but switch to Creative Shot mode and the camera shoots six images in a burst. The first is an unmodified photo, but the remaining five are customised by the camera with different aspect ratios and colour effects so you can pick the funkiest version afterwards. Flick the mode switch up to the Hybrid Auto setting and the SX600 HS operates as normal, but rather than just snapping images, it discretely captures an accompanying 4-second video too. The resulting footage and stills are then merged to form a video and photographic montage of your day. It's a neat trick that's somewhat similar to the Zoe feature on some HTC smartphones and will either be a love-it or forget-it feature.

When you'd like to get creative the Canon IXUS 265 HS delivers a modest but useful range of effects. There's those Creative Shot and Hybrid Auto modes mentioned earlier, but if you delve into the shooting mode menu you'll also find effects like fish-eye and miniaturisation distortions, plus a ubiquitous toy camera retro look. These are mixed in with regular shooting modes which also includes a useful Smart Shutter function which will automatically snap your shot when the camera detects a smiling face. Switch to the My Colours menu and you can set all shots to be automatically recorded with enhanced colour saturation, sepia tones or in monochrome.

More and more digital compact cameras are being produced with wi-fi connectivity, but there's not generally a great deal that can be done with it. Usually, you can only upload your pictures to another device or website. Canon have gone to town though and squeezed every last bit of use from it. For example, you can download the Canon CameraWindow app from App Store or Google Play and connect the camera to your phone for wireless control. You can use your phone as a GPS service to geotag your photographs. You can back-up your photos to a website or computer, print directly with a wi-fi enabled printer as well as the previously mentioned uploading to social media. The IXUS 265 HS also features NFC (Near Field Communication) technology (the same technology that's used for mobile payments), which allows you to connect it to a compatible internet enabled device or another NFC-enabled camera by simply tapping them together.

Front	Top

All Canon digital compact cameras have two menus; one for quick access to frequently used features and one for more in-depth modes. The first is accessed by pressing the FUNC. SET button in the centre of the navigation pad. A small scrolling menu will pop up to the left. The colouring is orange on grey which wouldn't be our first choice, but does look quite nice. Here you can change the ISO, white-balance, resolution and shooting modes among other things.

The main menu is plainly signed on the rear button and pressing it opens up a dedicated window to it. There are only two tabs so that it doesn't overwhelm the beginner. Because of only using two tabs, the menu is extremely easy to use, but we need to cover a few of the features to give an idea of what the camera is capable of for the newcomer to photography. The Camera tab is for features that directly affect the way the Canon IXUS 265 HS takes pictures such as Flash settings, Blink detection and Focusing modes.

There's a nifty feature called iContrast towards the bottom which expands the dynamic range of the photographs. That means that if you're in a situation where there's a lot of contrast, the sensor normally will not be able to cope with the dark shadows and bright light. This will result in no detail in dark areas and burn out on the highlights. iContrast works to reduce the effect of this and balance out the exposure more. Flick over to the Setup menu and these modes will affect the camera in it's day to day operation such as noise control, date & time, power options and wi-fi settings. The previously mentioned ECO mode is found in this menu.

Memory Card Slot	Battery Compartment

Continuous shooting on the Canon IXUS 265 HS is great. Its 3.9fps capture rate is fast for this class of camera, and unlike many a compact it won't throw in the towel after a handful of shots and slow to a snail's pace. Depending on the speed of your memory card the burst rate will eventually deteriorate, but we found the camera kept on shooting at least 2fps. You can also indulge in a more rapid 10.5fps shooting speed, albeit only at 4 megapixel resolution, but again the camera keeps going until the memory card is full. Of course if all this still isn't fast enough to record the action, there's always Full HD video capture.

The Canon IXUS 265 HS can be switched on to review pictures whether it's powered up or not. If it's off, simply hold the Playback button down a bit longer and it will come to life. Pictures are shown full screen as default but pressing the DISP. button will scroll through the options of information you want to have on screen. For instance, you can have no info, basic info such as the resolution, date & time and file number or you can go the whole hog and have all shooting information displayed with a thumbnail of the picture and even a histogram. There's a Function menu in playback and brings up features such as the delete button (for that one image you're on), favourite, lock and rotate. There's also an Image search feature which will look for pictures using their date, favourites – if you have any or people – using face detection among others.

Directly under the box opening is a small card tray which holds the software and manuals. The booklet is only a brief manual with the full manual being stored electronically on the CD. The CD also contains a picture viewing suite which offers basic editing and tagging. Beneath this is the camera with a battery, charger, wrist strap and USB cable.

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this review were taken using the 16 megapixel SuperFine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 7Mb.

The Canon IXUS 265 HS produces images of fairly good quality. It recorded noise-free images at ISO 100 and 200, but there's already some noise and slight colour desaturation at ISO 400. ISO 800 shows more obvious noise and loss of colour, while ISO 1600 and the fastest setting of ISO 3200 aren't very usable except for small prints and web use.

The Canon IXUS 265 HS handled chromatic aberrations quite well, with limited purple fringing effects appearing only in high contrast situations and generally at the edges of the frame. The built-in flash worked well indoors, with no red-eye and good overall exposure. The night photograph was excellent, with the maximum shutter speed of 15 seconds being long enough for most after-dark shots.

Anti-shake works very well when hand-holding the camera in low-light conditions or when using the telephoto end of the zoom range. Macro performance is excellent, allowing you to focus as close as 1cm away from the subject. The images were a little soft straight out of the Canon IXUS 265 HS at the default sharpening setting and ideally require some further sharpening in an application like Adobe Photoshop, or you can change the in-camera setting.

Noise

The Canon IXUS 265 HS has six sensitivity settings at full resolution. Auto mode uses a range between ISO 100 and ISO 3200, or you can switch to the Program shooting mode to manually select these settings.

ISO 100 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)
ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)
ISO 1600 (100% Crop)	ISO 3200 (100% Crop)

Sharpening

We found that the Canon IXUS 265 HS images are already pretty sharp, but do benefit from a little touch up in post processing.

Original (100% Crop)	Sharpened (100% Crop)

Focal Range

The Canon IXUS 265 HS' 12x zoom lens achieves a maximum wide-angle focal length equivalent to 24mm, and is capable of a telephoto reach of 300mm (in 35mm-camera terms).

24mm	300mm

Chromatic Aberrations

The Canon IXUS 265 HS handled chromatic aberrations fairly well during the review, with purple and green fringing present around the edges of objects in high-contrast situations, as shown in the examples below.

Chromatic Aberrations 1 (100% Crop)	Chromatic Aberrations 2 (100% Crop)

File Quality

Every image size option on the Canon IXUS 265 HS is accompanied by two quality settings: Fine and Super Fine. Going for the latter will up the file size of each image from 4MB to around 6MB.

SuperFine (6.76Mb) (100% Crop)	Fine (4.26Mb) (100% Crop)

Macro

The close focusing of the Canon IXUS 265 HS at wide-angle is a mere 1cm. It does mean that there's little light getting in when you do that and the edge definition drops off leaving around 50% of the image in focus.

Macro	Macro (100% Crop)

Flash

The Canon IXUS 265 HS' flash can only manage a relatively weak 4m range and hence there's some fairly obvious vignetting in our wide-angle test shot taken at a distance of 1.5m. The flash has four modes: Auto, On, Off and Slow Synchro, plus a separate setting to enable or disable red-eye reduction. Whether this is active or not, the camera successfully avoids any trace of red-eye.

Flash Off - Wide Angle (24mm)	Flash On - Wide Angle (24mm)
Flash Off - Telephoto (300mm)	Flash On - Telephoto (300mm)

And here are some portrait shots. As you can see, neither the Flash On or the Red-eye-Reduction settings caused any red-eye.

Flash On	Flash On (100% Crop)
Red-eye Correction	Red-eye Correction (100% Crop)

Night

The Canon IXUS 265 HS's maximum shutter speed is 15 seconds, which is great news if you're seriously interested in night photography. The shot below was taken using a shutter speed of 15 seconds at ISO 100.

Night	Night (100% Crop)

Anti Shake

As you can see here, disabling IS when shooting handheld at the upper end of the Canon SX 265 HS' focal length range isn't a good idea. Keep the system on and it does a great job of counteracting the effects of camera shake.

Shutter Speed / Focal Length	Anti-Shake Off (100% Crop)	Anti-Shake On (100% Crop)
1/10th sec / 24mm
1/25th sec / 300mm

Special Effects

The Canon IXUS 265 HS offers several special effects modes, accessible via the dedicated shooting mode.

Fisheye	Miniature
Toy Camera	Monochrome
Super Vivid	Poster

My Colors

In addition to the special effect modes, you can also set the camera to apply various colour filters as you shoot. Choose from: Vivid, Neutral, Sepia, Black & White, Positive Film, Lighter Skin Tone, Darker Skin Tone, Vivid Blue/Green/Red or Custom Color.

Vivid	Neutral
Sepia	B&W
Positive Film	Lighter Skin Tone
Darker Skin Tone	Vivid Blue
Vivid Green

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Canon IXUS 265 HS camera, which were all taken using the 16 megapixel Superfine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample Movie & Video

Product Images

Front of the Canon IXUS 265 HS

Front of the Canon IXUS 265 HS / Turned On

Side of the Canon IXUS 265 HS

Side of the Canon IXUS 265 HS

Side of the Canon IXUS 265 HS

Side of the Canon IXUS 265 HS

Side of the Canon IXUS 265 HS

Side of the Canon IXUS 265 HS

Rear of the Canon IXUS 265 HS

Rear of the Canon IXUS 265 HS / Image Displayed

Rear of the Canon IXUS 265 HS / Turned On

Rear of the Canon IXUS 265 HS / Function Menu

Rear of the Canon IXUS 265 HS / Main Menu

Top of the Canon IXUS 265 HS

Bottom of the Canon IXUS 265 HS

Side of the Canon IXUS 265 HS

Side of the Canon IXUS 265 HS

Front of the Canon IXUS 265 HS

Front of the Canon IXUS 265 HS

Memory Card Slot

Battery Compartment

Conclusion

The Canon IXUS 265 HS is a small, slim camera with a versatile zoom that's easy to use and stylish enough to impress your friends, with some unique creative features such as the Hybrid Auto and Creative Shot modes to keep you entertained. The built-in wi-fi also ensures that the Canon IXUS 265 HS will appeal to the smartphone user, although sadly there's no touchscreen interface on this model.

Optically the Canon PowerShot SX700 HS is a strong performer thanks to its versatile 12x zoom range and minimal distortion. Image quality is fine in good light, but not so great at higher ISO speeds, with ISO 400 already suffering from obvious noise, smearing of fine detail and colour artifacts.

The Canon IXUS 265 HS is a joy to use. It's small and lightweight but has that presence of weight that gives you confidence that it's still in your possession. It's good looking enough to want to get it out at every opportunity when on nights out. There's enough modes and features on it to keep you entertained for hours and it has convenient features on it to help you get your pictures to a safe storage area. We found the menus are a breeze and well lit with contrasting dark grey and bright orange. We only have one small gripe - the battery door is badly made from flimsy plastic and has no lock, a minor criticism maybe, but worth pointing out.

For the price, the Canon IXUS 265 HS is a great little camera, despite our reservations about the image quality in low-light. If you're looking for an affordable, accomplished camera from one of the big names, you could do a lot worse than the new Canon IXUS 265 HS.

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4.5
Features	4
Ease-of-use	4.5
Image quality	3.5
Value for money	4

Main Rivals

Listed below are some of the rivals of the Canon IXUS 265 HS.

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Canon IXUS 265 HS from around the web.

Specifications

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