The Canon IXUS 1000HS was launched to mark the IXUS brand's 10 year anniversary. This point-and-shoot camera boasts a 10-megapixel sensor and features a 10x optical zoom lens. As you'd expect the camera is also capable of Full HD video recording. According to Canon, the IXUS 100HS is the first camera to feature such a capable super zoom lens in a body that is around 22mm thick.
In hand the camera feels very well built care of its aluminium alloy shell and the lines of IXUS' styling are instantly evident at first glance. The camera doesn't have a viewfinder but the widescreen LCD is more than adequate for framing your photos before you capture them. Outdoors, the screen has enough muscle to overcome washout by natural light.
The 1000HS is sparse in terms of buttons and controls, the most prominent piece of the interface is a control wheel for navigating menus that encircles a Func.Set button. Atop of this is a dual-function record button for capturing video; the button starts and stops the recording function. This is an odd inclusion given that most cameras use the standard shutter control button to start/stop video recording. Below the control wheel are two more buttons; Menu and Play. On top of the camera is a switch to toggle between Movie mode, ‘P' shooting mode where the user can determine a few characteristics of the shot manually, and the amateur-friendly Auto mode. The On/Off button lies next to it and finally the shutter button sits to the right with a zoom lever surrounding it.
Thanks to its dimensions, weight and design, the IXUS 1000HS sits firmly in hand and single-handed use is a doddle. When starting up the camera the user is greeted by a Canon wallpaper, and as you'd expect of a Canon camera, the interface and menu systems are simple to use. Features such as White balance, ISO setting, centre weighted or spot metering, image size and quality, flash, red eye reduction, iContrast and blink detection can easily be adjusted via the menu system.
Image processing is done by Canon's patented DIGIC4 processor and images captured by the IXUS ultimately proved to be of good quality. Colours appeared natural and vivid with the camera's iContrast helping to correct a lot of deliberately under and over exposed shots. The images the Canon captured also appeared very sharp and focused. Image stabilisation is effective and no loss of focus was evident even with our gruelling stability indexing test at no zoom. Zoomed stability was satisfactory but inconsistent upon repeated shooting. In stable hands though the zoom is the best we've seen in a point-and-shoot camera. The Canon's autofocus is questionable when clicking multiple pictures in short sequence however.