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Image quality is generally excellent from the Canon IXUS 510 HS, which is impressive considering the small 1/2.3-inch sensor with 10.1 million pixels jammed onto it.
You can set the sensitivity to up to ISO 3200 in the Canon IXUS 510 HS's Program mode, and below ISO 800 images are more or less indistinguishable from each other, which is impressive. Canon's noise-supression is effective at ISO 1600 and 3200, although the trade-off is significantly less sharpness in images at the higher reaches.
The 12x zoom, f/3.4-5.6 lens held its own well in our tests. As well as offering an entirely practical amount of reach for most situations (it's ideal for travel), chromatic aberration is very well controlled across the board.
Appropriately for a camera that can send pictures straight to the web, the Canon IXUS 510 HS comes with a number of image presets. These run a rather familiar gamut - think a faux fish-eye effect, a fake tilt-shift mode and so on - but it's still pleasing to be able to turn out stylised images without needing to go near a computer.
Disappointingly, none of these effects can be applied after the fact, so you can't shoot a standard image and then apply a punched-up, vignetted style to it, so a bit of anticipation helps.
Elsewhere, Canon's compact camera expertise is on show - gained from making cameras such as the excellent Canon IXUS 125 HS, Canon IXUS 230 HS and Canon PowerShot G1 X. White balance and exposure is consistently accurate, and there are a few features to help more advanced photographers get the most out of their shots. Evaluative, centre-weighted and spot metering are all on offer, and you can set your autofocus point manually with a well-aimed prod at the screen.
