Canon Ixus 300 HS Review

The Canon Ixus 300 HS is one pretty interesting point-and-shoot camera. It slightly departs from the usual Ixus look and combines both form and function in such a relatively small compact camera. Full review of the Ixus 300 HS after the jump.

The Ixus 300 HS comes in a variety of colors but the review unit that we used is the red one. The camera body is mostly built in steel with a glossy bright-red finish and a combination of sharp and curved edges that reminds me of a red-hot Ferrari.

Canon Ixus 300HS
10-megapixel 1/2.3″ CMOS sensor
28-105mm (35mm equivalent)
3.8x optical zoom
f/2.0 – f/5.3
720p HD video
Image Stabilization
ISO 125 – 3200
15 secs. – 1/2500 sec. shutter speed

If you’ve tried or owned an Ixus before, the Ixus 300 HS is mostly similar in terms of UI and controls plus a few added features here and there. It wasn’t hard to master and figure out where to go to achieve certain settings but it wasn’t too easy either.

There are no manual controls in here unlike the LX3 but for a point-and-shoot camera, the auto mode can do the job just as well.

Controls are found on the top side with the on/off button, a switch for still or video and the zoom dial. The large screen at the back takes most of the space leaving a little room for the Function dial, play and menu buttons.

Photo quality ranges from good to great and I pretty much liked how it handles macro shots at very close range. Images looked natural and vivid. That f/2.0 is great for low-light and a nicer or shallower depth-of-field.

You can see more of the sample photos in the gallery here.

The built-in image stabilization greatly helps reduce the blurring in some cases and especially when shooting moving objects.

The Ixus 300 HS also has a couple of fancy shots to choose from including this miniature effect (like this one). Here are several shots I took using this effect.

The fish-eye effect is also nice but doesn’t produce really great results probably because the lens isn’t very wide (28mm) enough. I think this effect is dependent on the subject and the relative distance to really capture that cool effect. It’s actually the 240fps video @ 320×240 and hi-speed burst at 8.4 shots/sec that I wasn’t able to test out.

The 720p video capture take some pretty good footages — video is clean and sharp. Works smoothly even when zooming in or out of a subject. See sample YouTube clip below.

The Canon Ixus 300 HS using an SD card slot placed at the bottom of the unit beside the battery compartment. The unit does not have an internal storage and it seems Canon no longer includes a free card out of the box (although it’s usually just 16 or 32MB).

I’ve been a fan of the Ixus line of point-and-shoot cameras by Canon since I bought my first Ixus 30 many years ago. The Canon Ixus 300 HS relived that same excitement I had back then — it has a good combination of features and performance wrapped in a nice packaging and I think it’s well worth the Php24,950USD 425INR 36,043EUR 405CNY 3,096 price tag (though that Php17k price in one of them Multiply stores makes it bargain).

Update: The retail box comes with a 4GB SD card, camera case, under 3 Year Warranty, and a signature Timepiece or Pixma iP2770 Printer.