Canon Digital IXUS i
| Launch date | October 2003 |
|---|---|
| Camera type | Ultra-compact point&shoot digicam |
| Camera size | 90 x 47 x 19 mm 140 grams (inc. battery) |
| Sensor type | CCD |
| Sensor size | 1/2.5" (5.7 x 4.3 mm) |
| Resolution | 2272 x 1704 (4 megapixels) |
| Memory card | SD |
| Battery | NB-3L |
| Lens | 6.4mm f/2.8 (35mm equiv. 38mm) |
If you just want to see some photographs, skip straight to the results section.
In the early to mid-2000s the vast majority of compact digicams had zoom lenses with a short 3x zoom ratio and a 35mm equiv. focal length of around 38-115mm. But there was a small band of cameras with fixed focal length semi-wide lenses. These cameras fell into two broad classes: budget cameras that need to cut as many corners as possible to hit a low price point, and a far more interesting class of camera that aimed appeal to luxury/style oriented customers who also wanted a camera that was as small and discrete as possible. The camera you see here, the Canon IXUX i, is part of the small and exclusive club which included:
- The Canon IXUS i series, which began with the camera you can see here, and was followed by the i5, i zoom and i7 (though only the first 2 has fixed focal length lenses).
- The Sony DSC-U series which included the U10, U20, U30, U40 and U50
- And finally the most luxurious of all, the Contax i4R. The entire Contax brand was discontinued shortly after so there was never any follow-ups to this camera.
There is now doubt that Canon succeeded in making the IXUS i very stylish indeed! They enhanced its style credentials but making it available in 4 beautiful colours:
Canon IXUX i in Platinum Silver
Canon IXUX i in Piano Black
Canon IXUX i in Pearl White
Canon IXUX i in Classic Bronze
All cameras in this class are basically auto-everything devices with very little in the way of manual controls, and the Canon IXUS i is no exception. On the back of the camera there is a very minimal set of controls that does little more than let you access and navigate the menu sistem, switch the flash on and off, set the self-timer, and zoom your photos when reviewing them on the tiny rear monitor. But this fits in very well with this camera's role as a simple visual note-taking and social diary device that is small enough to effortlessly carry with you everywhere. And as you can see in the photo at the beginning of this article of the IUXS i in my hand, this camera really is deliciously tiny.
Buying a Canon Digital IXUS i in 2025
Even though this camera was sold as a luxury item back in 2003, today you don't need to spend very much money to add one of these little jewels to your collection. £31 (inc. P&P) was enough to secure one in very nice condition and complete with the box and all it's original accessories (though it has to be said it could do with a new battery!). I think that was a pretty representative price.
The only camera of this type that is seriously collectable is the Contax i4R, mainly due to it's extreme rarity. If you see one for sale don't be surprised to see an asking price of several hundred pounds!
The Canon Digital IXUS i results
So let's start out with some torture tests for the poor wee IXUS i!
Just like most small sensor compacts from the early 2000s, the IXUS i doesn't handle conditions with a wide dynamic range at all well. In fact I think the IXUS i might be a bit worse than average in the regard. In the first shot here the gentle evening autumn light falling across these leaves looks really nice, but in the resulting photograph the area at the top looks really ugly!
And in the photograph below the chromatic aberrations in the top left hand corner of this image are also pretty catastrophic. Again, a very typical problem for a compact digicam, but this really does have a ruinous effect on this image. Fortunately, this time the standard tools in Adobe Lightroom has done a good enough job of removing the aberrations, meaning a small print of this image wouldn't look too bad.
And once you move out of such such testing conditions, the little IXUS i proves itself capable of turning in some very attractive results, perfectly good enough for making small prints and perfectly appropriate for it's role as a visual note-taker.
