Overall Image Quality

I'm pleased and impressed with the Digital IXUS v. Canon appear to have carried over the developement work they've put into the IXUS 300, A10 and A20 to give the IXUS v better colour, better metering and better overall image "balance". Sharpness and resolution are good (lens can be a little soft in the corners at times), colours are vibrant but not over saturated and in total the IXUS v is not only an improvement over last years Digital IXUS but can show some of the bigger 2 megapixel digital cameras a thing or two.

Purple Fringing (Chromatic Aberrations)

Just like the IXUS 300 the IXUS v exhibited almost no chromatic aberrations, it suffers a little from blooming (the overflow of charge from saturated pixels) which you can see below (along with some very very slight chromatic aberrations).

Visible chromatic aberrations in an "every day shot"
Our now standard chromatic aberration test shot

Barrel and Pincushion Distortion

Zero, no pincushion distortion at full tele, another excellent achievement from such a small lens. There is however visible barrel distortion at full wide angle, we measured it as about 1.1%.

Barrel Distortion, 1.1% @ Wide Angle	Pincushion Distortion, ~0% @ Full Tele

White Balance

Good news, white balance presets which actually work! Once more Canon seem to have solved another niggling problem, white balance presets which don't quite work, the sunny, indoor and fluorescent presets work well and should get you out of trouble even in odd lighting conditions. The Auto white balance only seemed to work well in natural light.

Outdoors, Auto	Outdoors, Cloudy	Outdoors, Sunny
Incandescent, Auto	Incandescent, Indoor
Fluorescent, Auto	Fluorescent, Fluorescent