Nikon had big cameras and Olympus had tough cameras, so what does that leave Canon to impress us with? Little cameras, and there are five of them.
In fact, while there might be five cameras that you can consider new from Canon, three of them look very, very similar, so good luck telling them apart.
We’ll tackle those first, and they arrive in the IXUS 285 HS, the IXUS 175, and the IXUS 180, with all three offering a 20 megapixel sensor of some form, though we’re told the 20.2 megapixel sensor of the IXUS 285 HS may be a little more impressive in comparison to the standard 20 megapixel sensor on the other two.
That’s a minor difference, though, because while all three kind of look the same, their zoom is one of the biggest reasons for being different.
Starting with the baby of the bunch, the IXUS 175 provides an 8x zoom providing 28 to 224mm, with the IXUS 180 stepping it up slightly to 10x with 24 to 240mm, and the 285 HS getting a proper boost to 12x zoom operating at 25 to 300mm.
Canon’s Digic 4+ image processor runs on all of these, and there’s even a bit of wireless transfer support here, too, making it handy if you want to send the images to your phone on the go.
No prices on either of these, but if you like your compacts small, you’ll be able to find them in stores later this month.
Meanwhile, Canon also let loose two PowerShot models that are also about zoom, but in a different way.
You might think that the zoom offered by the three IXUS variants is nice, but what if you had a range more like 24 to 1008mm, or even something a bit longer?
That’s what Canon has in store for buyers of two PowerShot models heading to Aussie store shelves in February to March, and while they’re similar, they again sport some of the minor differences the IXUS models offer.
For instance, both the cameras here offer up a 20 megapixel sensor, but of the two, Canon has provided what we suspect is the same 20 megapixel sensor from the IXUS 180 in the PowerShot SX420 IS, listing it solely as “20 megapixels”.
Meanwhile, the model up from this — the SX540 HS — jumps up another 0.3 megapixels to 20.3mp, and even changes processor, improving on the Digic 4+ processor of the SX420 IS to a Digic 6 in the SX540 HS.
If all of this just looks like numeric jargon, you’re not far off, but you can more or less put it down to the SX420 IS being a longer reach version of the IXUS 180, while the SX540 HS is an improvement on that model in the processing and sensor.
There are also zoom changes, with the 24 to 1008mm sitting in the 42x optical of the SX420, while the SX540 HS is a good and proper travel camera, letting you get super close to a subject with a range of 24 to 1200mm. Yikes.
As for pricing, neither of these have actual tags for them — Canon doesn’t give pricing on cameras anymore in Australia — but you’ll find both of them in Australia from late-February to mid-March.
