By Bryn Marshall
The IXUS 310 HS / ELPH 500 HS shares the same 'choc-ice' styling of earlier wide-screen IXUS / ELPH designs, and our brown testimonial sample made the analogy much more fitting. It's also readily available in gold, silver and pink. At 185 grams including the card and battery it's no light-weight, however fits comfortably in your hand and jacket, if not being rather shirt-pocket sized. Unlike the Sony Cyber-shot TX10 you can't take it in the water and at the time of writing there was no undersea housing available - at least not from Canon anyway.
The IXUS 310 HS / ELPH 500 HS continues the trend for Canon touch-screen compacts to shun physical controls. There's an on/off button and a two-position mode turn on the top panel and a playback button on the back; aside from the huge round shutter release button and its zoom collar that's it for physical controls.
The rear panel is taken up virtually totally by the display, with a little ridged panel on the right which offers a really effective thumb rest - this is a comfy camera to hold and run. With a 16:9 facet ratio, the screen is preferably suited to HD video recording, although black vertical bars appear down the side for still shooting in the native 4:3 element ratio. The absence of a video 'mode' (you press a record display icon to start shooting video in any stills mode) indicates you need to frame up your shot in 4:3, the camera then changing to the 16:9 view when taping starts. If you find you're shooting more video than stills you will most likely set the element still photo ratio to 16:9, however you have to remember to change it back unless you're happy with 16:9 stills with a cropped resolution of 4000 x 2248, or just over 8 Megapixels.
To look at, the display is a joy. With 460k pixels, images look clear and crisp and the viewing angle is nice and large both horizontally and vertically, so even when held above your head you can easily compose shots. The touch-screen does not feel as receptive as some of the earlier touch-screen IXUS designs I've assessed though. I needed to push rather firmly for the screen to react and flicking with menu options didn't have the exact same natural feel as it does on my iPhone for instance. The touch functions are enhanced by tap controls throughout playback and I personally found it a whole lot much easier to tap the side of the camera to advance playback as opposed to swiping the display.
Touch-icon controls are arranged in the black vertical strips down either side of the display. These include shooting mode, video recording, flash and self-timer controls in addition to Canon's quick-access 'Func' menu. What's consisted of right here is completely customisable so you can configure the display to include pretty much anything you desire as long as there's room, and if it gets a bit littered there's a display icon that makes it all disappear.
The inbuilt flash has a maximum quoted array of 5 metres which is quite reasonable, it's likewise fast to recycle, particularly when shooting close subjects when the power is immediately lowered. Less excellent is thetThe IXUS 310 HS / ELPH 500 HS's battery life - around 180 shots from the totally charged NB-6L Lithium Ion battery.
The integrated battery and card compartment is found behind a door on the underside of the camera and takes SD (HC and XC variations) and MMC (MMCplus and HCMMCplus variations) cards. An additional door on the right side of the camera opens to disclose mini HDMI and A/V / USB out ports.
The IXUS 310 HS / ELPH 500 HS continues the trend for Canon touch-screen compacts to shun physical controls. There's an on/off button and a two-position mode turn on the top panel and a playback button on the back; aside from the huge round shutter release button and its zoom collar that's it for physical controls.
The rear panel is taken up virtually totally by the display, with a little ridged panel on the right which offers a really effective thumb rest - this is a comfy camera to hold and run. With a 16:9 facet ratio, the screen is preferably suited to HD video recording, although black vertical bars appear down the side for still shooting in the native 4:3 element ratio. The absence of a video 'mode' (you press a record display icon to start shooting video in any stills mode) indicates you need to frame up your shot in 4:3, the camera then changing to the 16:9 view when taping starts. If you find you're shooting more video than stills you will most likely set the element still photo ratio to 16:9, however you have to remember to change it back unless you're happy with 16:9 stills with a cropped resolution of 4000 x 2248, or just over 8 Megapixels.
To look at, the display is a joy. With 460k pixels, images look clear and crisp and the viewing angle is nice and large both horizontally and vertically, so even when held above your head you can easily compose shots. The touch-screen does not feel as receptive as some of the earlier touch-screen IXUS designs I've assessed though. I needed to push rather firmly for the screen to react and flicking with menu options didn't have the exact same natural feel as it does on my iPhone for instance. The touch functions are enhanced by tap controls throughout playback and I personally found it a whole lot much easier to tap the side of the camera to advance playback as opposed to swiping the display.
Touch-icon controls are arranged in the black vertical strips down either side of the display. These include shooting mode, video recording, flash and self-timer controls in addition to Canon's quick-access 'Func' menu. What's consisted of right here is completely customisable so you can configure the display to include pretty much anything you desire as long as there's room, and if it gets a bit littered there's a display icon that makes it all disappear.
The inbuilt flash has a maximum quoted array of 5 metres which is quite reasonable, it's likewise fast to recycle, particularly when shooting close subjects when the power is immediately lowered. Less excellent is thetThe IXUS 310 HS / ELPH 500 HS's battery life - around 180 shots from the totally charged NB-6L Lithium Ion battery.
The integrated battery and card compartment is found behind a door on the underside of the camera and takes SD (HC and XC variations) and MMC (MMCplus and HCMMCplus variations) cards. An additional door on the right side of the camera opens to disclose mini HDMI and A/V / USB out ports.
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