We are all used to PC's dropping in price and growing in specification and digital cameras are no different, no sooner have we praised the Canon Ixus I range they bring out the next generation and up the spec. On test here we have the Canon Ixus 500, this is a 5 mega pixel camera which continues the Ixus bloodline and takes the majority of its great features from those who went before.

The Canon Ixus 500 continues in the style created by Yasushi Shiotani with highly finished stainless steel bodies that inspire confidence in the build quality while looking cool. However you can be sure that all around will know you have the range topping Ixus 500 as a gold bezel around the lens. The undoubted style of the Canon Ixus range has won it many friends but this is no emperors clothing inside the Ixus 500 packs a 1/1.8" CCD delivering 5 mega pixels resolution and allowing shots sizes up to a massive 2592 x 1944, the optical 3x zoom gives a good close up capability before you resort to the dreaded digital zoom which does degrade the picture quality, its best to use optical zoom only and then make any other adjustments in Photoshop later.

Performance wise the Canon Ixus 500 sports a 9 point auto focus system which copes well with off centre images and seems to gain correct focus very quickly even in low light situations, the DIGIC processor used in the canon range offers excellent colour reproduction, the DIGIC processor also shows itself in the speed at which images are displayed on the rear TFT screen after being taken, no waiting around with the Ixus 500.

The Ixus 500 measures just 87 x 57 x 28 mm and weighs a little over 185 grams without the lithium ion battery and comes as standard with 32mb storage but can be expanded via its CF card slot to a maximum of 2 gigabytes which is plenty even with the size of file the Ixus 500 can generate, files are extracted from the Ixus either by placing the card in a memory reader or by USB 1.2 mini jack.

You can also capture some moving pictures in Motion JPEG format (AVI) the Ixus 500 will grab up to 30 seconds in VGA mode or up to 3 minutes in QVGA, for rapid fire photography the Canon Ixus 500 comes equipped with a burst mode which takes 2.2 full resolution images per second. Managing the Ixus is via the 1.5" TFT screen on the rear, the Ixus navigation is largely unchanged from earlier models which is good news as the range has an excellent intuitive system,. Even during replay the 500 can detect which orientation the image was taken in and rotate the image displayed to give correct portrait or landscape layout.

The Ixus comes with bundled software to extract and work with your images plus the Ixus range can connect via pict bridge to share images directly with an enabled printer with a simple one button operation its easy to transfer your pictures to any Windows 2000 / XP machine.

The Canon Ixus 500 certainly provides the range topper that Canon wanted and it is available for  the UK right now, priced at £275 it represents great value for such a small yet powerful camera.

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