Canon Ixus 130 review

An excellent point-and-shoot compact for beginners, with plenty of features and great image quality

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Canon Ixus 130
Canon's Ixus 130 is light on options, but heavy on usability

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Movie modes can prove an odd blind spot for Canon – although its DSLRs are class-leading, who can forget the top of the line G11 compact, which offers only 640 x 480 at 30fps?

Fortunately, the Ixus 130 offers a movie mode which, while not exactly cinematic, is at least HD-compatible. The maximum resolution on offer is 1280 x 720, with a fixed frame rate of 30fps.

There isn't a wealth of options – you can't choose a more cinematic 24fps, for instance – and, with the features lacking in stills mode, it's not surprising that the option to set your own shutter speed and aperture size are absent.

It underlines the Ixus 130's role as a fire-and-forget camera for those who'd rather capture a moment than agonise about their camera's settings.

As it is, though, the Ixus 130 offers good-quality video at high resolution, and while pernickety types would prefer a decent manual mode, for under £150 it's hard to argue with what you get.

Dave Stevenson

Dave is a professional photographer whose work has appeared everywhere from National Geographic to the Guardian. Along the way he’s been commissioned to shoot zoo animals, luxury tech, the occasional car, countless headshots and the Northern Lights. As a videographer he’s filmed gorillas, talking heads, corporate events and the occasional penguin. He loves a good gadget but his favourite bit of kit (at the moment) is a Canon EOS T80 35mm film camera he picked up on eBay for £18.