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By David D. Busch
Nov 02, 2005

The Canon Digital IXUS 55, a 5-megapixel update to the IXUS 50, has more in common with its 4-megapixel IXUS 40 sibling than it does with the top-of-the-line 7-megapixel IXUS 750. Instead of the slightly larger, curvier body found in its higher-resolution stablemate, this IXUS has the same boxy, ultracompact frame as the IXUS 40 and shares virtually every other spec except resolution. What you get for your extra money is improved image quality--and that might be enough.

The differences between the IXUS 55 and the IXUS 50 that came before it are very minor, the most notable being an increase in LCD size, from 2 inches to 2.5 inches. The new model offers the same strong performance, unrelenting burst capabilities, and great battery life. If you're looking for an ultracompact snapshot camera and don't need manual controls, lots of scene modes, or a powerful electronic flash, this model may lure you into the Canon fold.

Design

	Instead of a mode dial, you use this switch to select shooting and playback modes.

The Canon Digital IXUS 55 looks good and feels good in your hands. It won't create an unsightly saggy pocket at a lightweight 140g and with dimensions of 86 x 53.5 x 21.6mm. Although large hands may have trouble curling around this tiny package, a two-handed grip is your best bet for getting a steady shot, because your index finger operates both the shutter-release button mounted on the top surface as well as its concentric zoom lever.

Canon manages to pack a lot of components into a limited amount of space. For example, the front surface hosts the 3x zoom lens, which retracts flush behind a protective cover when powered down; a tiny microphone; the focus-assist lamp; an electronic flash; and the optical viewfinder window. The bottom edge includes an honest-to-gosh metal--not plastic--tripod socket and a cover for the battery and SD/MMC memory card. One side edge has a flip-up access door for the I/O connectors.

	The four-way controller and a few buttons on the back of the camera let you change settings.

Other than a recessed power button and a green LED power light on top, all the key controls are bunched on the right side of the back panel, next to the 2.5-inch LCD. The most common settings can be adjusted with the four-way cursor pad, pressing Up to switch between spot, center-weighted, and evaluative metering; or Down to cycle among single-shot, burst mode, and a 2- to 10-second self-timer. The Left key selects normal, landscape, or macro focus, while the Right button activates autoflash/forced on/red-eye/slow sync/forced off speedlight modes.

	There's little on top of the camera aside from the shutter release, the power button, and a zoom toggle.

There's no mode dial on the IXUS 55. Jumping from picture review to movie to photo mode is accomplished with a three-way sliding switch, while scene options are invoked from a menu that pops up when you press the Set/Function button in the center of the four-way cursor pad. The function menu also provides access to key controls, such as exposure compensation (plus or minus 2EV in 1/3EV steps), ISO (50 to 400), compression ratio, and resolution.

A separate menu key pops up three pages of choices for shooting, setup, and customization, and there's a Display button to cycle among LCD status/preview options, while a small button marked with a dot activates printing and sharing features.

Features
The Canon Digital IXUS 55's feature set is, like its IXUS 50 predecessor's, a quirky mix of minimalist-basic features with a few interesting add-ons. For example, only six scene modes are available, but one of them is an underwater option that's useful with an optional Canon waterproof housing. The remaining five range from the mundane (Portrait, Night Snapshot, Kids/Pets, Indoor) to the unusual: A digital macro option that uses the zoom lever to expand a user-selectable portion of the image to fill the frame. There's also a clever My Colors mode that lets you increase the saturation of red, green, or blue hues; darken or lighten skin tones; swap colors; desaturate all colors but one; and adjust the color balance. Unfortunately, there's no sports/action mode, nor is there any manual control over shutter speed or F-stops, which would have leveraged this camera's great burst capabilities.

	You can save images and video on an SD or MMC card with the IXUS 55.

The 3x zoom offers a good compromise between wide-angle view and telephoto reach, with a 35mm-to-105mm range (35mm-camera equivalent), but the limited number of zoom steps made choosing the right focal length a jerky, hit-or-miss proposition. The good news is that the nine-point or center-spot autofocus system works well down to 3cm, although you'll need to use the LCD for framing, because the tiny optical viewfinder is woefully noncorrected for parallax.

You can choose evaluative, center-weighted, or spot metering, and Canon has added the ability to link spot metering to an autofocus point in this model. The camera will automatically select shutter speeds from 15 seconds to 1/1,500 second and apertures from F2.8 to F4.9. Automatic noise reduction kicks in for exposures longer than 1.3 seconds. As is common with ultracompact cameras housing a tiny battery, Canon conserves juice by underpowering the flash unit, limiting it to 3.5m in wide-angle mode and just 2.1m at the telephoto setting, when ISO is set to Auto.

This IXUS also offers useful playback options, including magnification from 2x to 10x, automatic or selectable picture rotation, a histogram, and voice annotation of photos. You can also play photos back in a slide show on the IXUS 55.

One quirky feature is its high-speed 60-frame-per-second mode, which can shoot half-speed slow-motion at 320 x 240 resolution for as long as 60 seconds. Opt for near-TV-quality 640 x 480 clips with monaural sound at 30fps, and you can shoot until your memory card fills.

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