Timings & File Sizes
The little IXUS 300 is surprisingly quick, thanks to that fast extending lens you don't have to wait around for it to start up, shot to shot times are good and you hardly ever find yourself hanging around waiting for it. It also has an internal buffer sufficiently large that you can keep firing off the shots without having to wait for images to be written out to the Compact Flash card. Shutter lag is good as is AF speed. It looks like the manufacturers are finally realising that speed and lag times are important in a digital camera, even one aimed at the "point and shoot" market.
The speed of the little Digital IXUS 300 puts many of its "bigger brothers" in the Powershot range and most of its competitors to shame.
Timing Notes: All times calculated as an average of three operations. Unless otherwise stated all timings were made on a 1600 x 1200 Super-Fine JPEG image (approx. 850 KB per image).
| Action | Details | Time
taken (seconds) |
Notes |
| Power: Off to Record | 3.3 | Lens takes 1.1 secs *1 | |
| Power: Off to Play | 1.8 | "Busy" displayed *2 | |
| Power: Record to Off | 1.8 | Lens retract | |
| Power: Play to Off | 0.7 | ||
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| Mode: Record to Play | 0.8 | "Busy" displayed *2 | |
| Mode: Play to Record | 2.2 | ||
|
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| Play: Magnify | <0.5 | ||
| Rec: Thumbnail view | 3 x 3 thumbnails | 1.5 | |
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| Auto Focus LAG | 0.5 - 1.2 | Fast *3 | |
| Shutter Release LAG | 0.1 | Fast | |
| Total LAG | 0.7 - 1.5 | Fast to Average | |
| Off to Shot Taken | 3.5 | Very fast | |
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| Shot to Shot | 1600 x 1200 JPEG Super-Fine | 1.6 | Very fast |
| *1 | This time includes the 1.2 second power button hold required to initiate power-up. |
| *2 | Camera displays "Busy", image is displayed about 1.5 seconds later |
| *3 | Generally autofocus times are below 1 second, this tends be longer for macro focus or when the AF assist lamp comes on. |
Continuous drive mode
The table below shows the results of our continuous shooting test, indicating the actual frame rate along with maximum number of frames at a selection of image resolution / quality settings and how long you would have to wait after taking the maximum number of frames before you could take the next shot.
| Image Type | Frames per sec (review off) * |
Max no. of frames |
Wait before |
| 1600 x 1200 Super-Fine | 1.25 fps | 7 | 3 secs |
| 1600 x 1200 Fine | 1.25 fps | 10 | 3 secs |
| 1600 x 1200 Normal | 1.25 fps | 24 | 3 secs |
| 1024 x 768 Fine | 1.30 fps | 23 | 3 secs |
| 640 x 480 Fine | 1.62 fps | 43 | 3 secs |
* (At 1600 x 1200) the camera shot one frame every 0.8 seconds AFTER the second frame which was taken 1.1 seconds after the first (e.g.. 0 sec, 1.1 sec, 1.9 sec, 2.6 sec, 3.4 sec etc.).
File Flush / Display Timing
Timings shown below are the time taken for the camera to process and "flush" the image out to the Compact Flash card, the timer was started as soon as the shutter release was pressed (shutter noise was heard) and stopped when activity indicator LED beside the viewfinder went off. This means the timings also include the cameras processing time and as such are more representative of the actual time to "complete the task".
If you hold your finger down on either the left or right arrows the camera will very quickly scroll through the images using a rough image to represent them (we timed this display as about 4 images per second).
| Store file of type | Time
to store (seconds) |
Time
to display (seconds) |
Approx. File size * |
Approx.
images on a 8 MB Compact Flash card |
| 1600 x 1200 JPEG Super-Fine | 3.7 | 0.8 | ~800 KB | 7 |
| 1600 x 1200 JPEG Fine | 2.9 | 0.6 | ~450 KB | 11 |
| 1600 x 1200 JPEG Normal | 2.1 | <0.5 | ~160 KB | 24 |
| 1024 x 768 JPEG Super-Fine | 2.8 | 0.6 | ~320 KB | 16 |
| 1024 x 768 JPEG Fine | 2.0 | <0.5 | ~190 KB | 24 |
| 1024 x 768 JPEG Normal | 2.0 | <0.5 | ~100 KB | 46 |
| 640 x 480 JPEG Super-Fine | 1.8 | <0.5 | ~150 KB | 35 |
| 640 x 480 JPEG Fine | 1.8 | <0.5 | ~90 KB | 50 |
| 640 x 480 JPEG Normal | 1.8 | <0.5 | ~45 KB | 87 |
* With JPEG it's difficult to predict the exact size of an image file because it will vary a fair amount depending on the content of the image (especially the amount of detail captured). For example, take a photograph of a fairly empty wall and you'll get a small JPEG, take a photograph of a bush with a lot of detail and you'll get a larger image. File sizes here are closer to the later, the larger size of file you should expect.
Battery life
As we expected with only a 680 mAh battery pack the Digital IXUS 300 only managed to last about an hour (during which time we took just over 90 frames) before the battery warning icon started flashing on the screen, around four minutes (and another 10 frames) later the camera powered down. Considering the small size and weight of the battery pack it has to be said that it lasted relatively well, though if I were considering this camera I'd definitely invest in a second battery pack (they're so small and easy to carry too).
