It doesn’t take long to dispel that worry-just long enough to take one shot and examine it close up, in fact. Tiny though it is, the Digital Ixus extracts every last ounce of quality out of its 2-megapixel CCD, backing it up with accurate autofocus, excellent exposure control, great colour and top-drawer contrast and saturation. This is as good as 2-megapixel images get.

In a digital camera this small, surely something’s got to give? It’s not image quality, so maybe it’s photographic control? True, the Digital Ixus isn’t designed with professionals or even advanced amateurs in mind, but it has all the features that you’d expect in a decent mid-range camera.

In Auto mode, there’s very little to do except compose the shot and shoot, but in Manual mode you can adjust the white balance (you can even calibrate it manually), apply exposure compensation, use long shutter speeds, change the ISO rating and flash mode, apply image effects (Sepia, Vivid and Neutral colour, black and white) – the Ixus really is very well-featured. It even offers to auto-rotate portrait format shots for replaying on the LCD.

We’ve found that with other sub-compact digital cameras, ergonomics and accessibility sometimes suffer at the expense of image quality. This is not the case here. The Diqital Ixus is a very small camera, but its rectangular design (no protruding lens barrels or grips here) means the surface area available for the controls is actually quite large. This means that the camera’s backplate isn’t really that cluttered – the controls are well-spaced, well labelled and crisp and positive to use.

They’re well-planned, too. If you want to apply some exposure compensation, for example, you just press one button and use the navipad to choose the level of compensation. This is in marked contrast to many other miniature digital cameras that offer the same features but bury them in the menus.

The same button offers access to the white balance settings and photo effects (two presses and three presses respectively). Meanwhile, the navipad’s directional buttons double as flash, metering pattern, focusing and self-timer controls when you’re taking pictures. This duplication of functions isn’t confusing in practice, and makes the control layout both simpler and more direct.

For what s essentially a snapshot camera, there’s enough photographic control here to keep more advanced users happy too. We also have to mention the camera’s optical viewfinder, which (we’ll stick our necks out here), is surely the biggest, brightest and best optical finder on any current digital camera.

The Digital Ixus’s smart control layout is similar to that of other Canon digital cameras. Canon’s also assembled a good software suite to go with its digital models, including ZoomBrowser EX for browsing your images and carrying out modest manipulation. The PhotoRecord application, meanwhile, lets you assemble photos into albums for printing at specific sizes and layouts.

One of our favourites, though, is the PhotoStitch panorama-creation program. This works in conjunction with the camera’s special ’stitching’ mode (available on the Ixus). Here, the display changes to show a smaller version of the shot you’ve just taken so that you can overlap and align the next one in the panoramic series.

However, the two drawbacks to the original model haven’t changed, and although Canon Digital Ixus v2 produces great results, it’s still only a 2-megapixel camera. What’s more, wonderful build quality notwithstanding, it’s competing in price with higher-resolution rivals – for this money, you can get a 3.3-megapixel model or even a budget 4-megapixel camera.

All but the kitchen sink

So if the 1D Mark II is essentially a fast action digital camera, does it still have the photographic tools to tackle other jobs too? Absolutely. There are certain things you can take for granted, such as full PASM exposure modes. Canon EOS 1D Mark II does without a conventional mode dial, relying instead on a Mode button, which you press while turning a command wheel to change modes. It’s not quite the same, but does the job just as well.

And you can choose from no fewer than four different metering patterns, including a 21-zone multi-segment system, centre-weighted, partial (13.5% of the frame), spot (3.8%) and an excellent multi-spot option. Here, you can take up to eight different spot readings from different parts of the scene. When you release the shutter, the camera averages all the readings you’ve taken. It’s ideal for arriving at optimum exposures in difficult conditions and actually guite an addictive system.

Exposure bracketing is another standard option in cameras like this but, characteristically, the 1D Mark II goes one step further. Conventional bracketing adjusts the lens aperture and shutter speed to produce over- and under-exposed versions of the same shot. What the Canon can do, however, is bracket using the ISO sensitivity instead. The lens aperture and shutter speed remain constant, which can be an important part of the way you’ve set up your shot, for movement blur or depth of field, for example. In case you’re worried about image quality deterioration from higher ISOs, you needn’t. The Canon’s images are remarkably smooth and noise-free, even at ISO 1,600.

Professionals will often face a dilemma between speed and image quality. RAW files offer the best potential quality, but quite often you need images in a hurry, and only JPEGs will do. Canon EOS 1D Mark II will save both at once. The JPEG version is ready for use straight away, and you can work on the RAW version later on when, or if, you need to.

Nothing on this digital camera is a gadget. They’re all carefully thought out professional features. This applies to the twin card slots, too. The obvious advantages are that you can essentially double the camera’s storage capacity and that you can use two different card types. But you can also opt to save images simultaneously on both cards, a valuable backup for unrepeatable shots, or for retaining copies while sending one card off to the office or a client.

There are also Color Matrix settings, designed to offer a selection of colour models according to the type of work you’re doing. These low saturation, high saturation and portrait modes. What’s more, you can save custom modes comprising your own combination of tone curve, contrast and sharpness settings.

These apply toJPEG images, however, and you may find it easier all-round to shoot RAW files and worry about it later, since all these options are provided by the bundled RAW conversion utility-the difference is that you computer rather than the camera applying them at the time of shooting.

If you don’t like the way Canon EOS 1D Mark II operates straight out of the box, you can explore the camera’s 20 custom functions. The metering system and image quality are fine for demanding location and studio work, while macro workers will appreciate the mirror lock function (it reduces vibration when the shutter is fired), and long exposure accuracy is aided by an eyepiece shutter, which prevents light entering the viewfinder window and influencing the exposure reading.

Scary though this level of sophistication might be, it’s not necessary to understand it all at once, if  ever. You can pickup the 1D Mark II and start shooting without knowing the first thing about it, and only investigate the more advanced features as and when you need them. What’s more, just in case you get yourself in a knot with its various advanced functions, there’s a reset option (you just press a combination of buttons for a couple of seconds) to restore the default factory settings.

Canon EOS 1D Mark II Handling

This camera’s features are impressive enough, but its sheer physical presence is what really strikes you. It weighs a kilogram and a half before you even attach a lens. The Canon is so tall in the body that it won’t fit the average kit bag, and while the handgrip lets you carry it securely in one hand, you’re going to need the digits of a gorilla to put up with it for long.

The sheer mass is an inevitably result of the Canon’s professional build guality and resilience. The areas of the camera not covered with a grippy leatherette have a tough feeling matt black finish. The exterior surfaces, together with the switchgear, reinforce the feeling of solidity. When you’ve got the 1D Mark II in your hands, you realise the difference in construction between a $4,500 professional SLR and a $1,000 entry-level model.

Menu navigation is a little odd, in that you use this dial to switch menu tabs (with the Menu button held down) and then choose options (with the Select button held down). And you have to get used to other button/dial combinations for looking through saved images, deleting them or changing the view. It seems unnecessarily awkward at first, but you memories the control combinations soon enough, and it’s likely to prove much easier to operate this camera with gloves on, for example, than it would be with more conventional controls.

The Canon’s responsiveness is, as you’d expect, extraordinary. The 45-point AF system is super-fast and accurate and, in fact, it’s likely to be the speed of the motors in your lens that proves the weak point. Time to swap your old optics for the latest USM lenses, maybe? Particularly if you’re going to be using that 8fps continuous-shooting mode – it doesn’t leave much time between frames for the lens to refocus on moving subjects.

Canon EOS 1D Mark II Image quality

But how about that image quality? Can the 1D Mark II really stand in as a studio camera, too? First impressions are mixed. Images don’t seem to have much ‘bite’, and initially we were inclined to blame the Sigma zoom we used for the test. It turns out, that by default the Canon saves images with very little sharpening applied. Increase the sharpening level, or sharpen later in Photoshop, and you discover resolution and edge definition of a very high order indeed.

Exposures are a bit mixed, too, but this is a characteristic of nearly all digital SLRs. Compact cameras often do a better job in this respect, and to get the best from the Canon you’ll need to rediscover the art of working out exposures rather than just pointing and shooting.

You shouldn’t just shoot JPEGs, either. These don’t have the dynamic range of the full RAW images and, what’s more, the RAW conversion process enables you to draw out far more saturation and contrast, as well as fine-tuning the white balance. The good thing about this camera’s RAW fiies is that they’re remarkably compact-around 8.3MB, in this instance. Even If you save a large JPEG file at the same time, you’re still looking at a combined size of only 11MB or so per image.

Canon EOS 1D Mark II is hardly going to compete with entry-level cameras like the EOS 300D or 10D, or Nikon’s excellent D70. But, for pro use, it makes Nikon’s D2H look a little weak, and its results are good enough to make even the EOS IDs look a little superfluous.