Calling the IXUS 510 ‘small’ doesn’t do its portability justice. More descriptively, the camera is tiny, even for a compact camera, and more along the lines of being credit card sized (apart from its thickness).
Canon has packed a number of features that are familiar to its IXUS range into this small, solidly built, if somewhat boxy, frame. As we have come to expect from Canon, its build quality is excellent – the camera feels solid in one’s hand, and its strong metal construction across the board made it seem as though it could withstand its fair share of daily abuse.
The 3.2" touchscreen dominates the entire back of the camera.
The few buttons that you will find on the top of the camera include the on/off button, shutter release, zoom and, somewhat unusually, the play button. All of these are constrained to the top right of the camera. This seemingly small ergonomic design though, is welcome nonetheless, as it means that all essential functions can be accessed using one’s right hand, although we did find ourselves on occasion hitting that play button unintentionally.
Stand out features
Most of the 10.1 megapixel camera’s features are accessed via its bright 3.2" touchscreen, which has taken full possession of the back of the camera. On offer is a high speed burst mode, which enables photographers to capture up to a significant six frames per second; intelligent image stabilisation, in which the camera will adapt to different shooting scenarios and endeavour to eliminate camera shake, and face detection, soft focus and smooth skin, all of which are a boon for portraits.
Additionally, as we have become accustomed to on the IXUS cameras, there are several creative filters on offer, such as monochrome, super vivid, toy camera and fish eye.
Added to its 12x optical zoom (a 28-336 mm equivalent) and 100 to 3 200 ISO range is built in Wi-Fi, which enables one to connect the camera to notebook PCs or one’s wireless network. Furthermore, it also offers HD (1 920 x 1 080) movie capture and the ability to shoot a picture without pressing the shutter, but by merely touching the screen.
The camera's small size is complemented by its excellent build quality.
As befitting the camera’s size, photos are saved to a microSD card rather than a full sized SD card.
As we have come to expect from Canon’s IXUS range, image quality is very good, particularly at lower ISOs. Above ISO 400 though, noise does begin to creep in. Additionally, the small touchscreen and erratic touch responsiveness made navigating the camera’s features a little more hit or miss; large fingered photographers, consider yourself warned.
To the point
Nonetheless, the Canon IXUS 510 HS is still a very good, exceedingly compact camera, that is all too easy to carry around with one at all times. It has an RRP of R3 700.
