Pros

• HDMI output
• Good low-light performance
• Suitable for camera beginners

Cons

• Average speed performance
• Some loss of sharpness at edges

Key Specifications

• Review Price: £170.00
• 12.1-megapixel sensor
• HDMI output
• Full-HD video capture
• Stainless steel body
• 5x optical zoom

In many ways the new Canon IXUS 220 HS is about as close to the definition of a standard point-and-shoot camera as you can get, but with high-end build quality and a thickness of a mere 19.3mm it still stands out from the crowd. Canon sent us a vivid scarlet review sample, against which the black top plate shutter release and power controls stand out very clearly. With large backplate buttons to match, it’s a very approachable camera for first-time users.

Not much wider or taller than a business card, the IXUS 220 HS is an easy fit for the trouser pocket or clutch bag. Like the IXUS 310 HS model we reviewed recently, this IXUS boasts a resolution of a modest 12.1 megapixels from a 1/2.3-inch CMOS sensor. Its low-light shooting credentials are suggested by the ‘HS’ suffix, standing for ‘high sensitivity’, delivered here by a back-lit sensor and Digic 4 image processor. It supplies 60% lower noise levels at high ISO speeds, according to Canon – a claim we’ll test in due course.

Under the IXUS 220 HS’s shiny casing lurks an optically image-stabilised 5x zoom, starting out at a usefully wide 24mm and running up to an equivalent 120mm at the telephoto end. Rather more of a surprise is that the camera captures full-HD video clips of 1920×1080 pixels at 24 frames per second with the benefit of stereo sound – the dual microphones are located on the top plate. We also get a dedicated video record button to the top-right of the back plate LCD.

Press this and video clip recording commences no matter what mode the camera is currently set to. There’s no optical viewfinder, as we’ve come to expect of point-and-shoot compacts, and the screen is a modest 2.7in in size, offering a run-of-the-mill 230k dot resolution.

What do you get for your £170? Decent build, a dose of style and a better-than-average feature set, including HDMI output alongside standard AV/USB output.

The IXUS 220 HS’s stainless steel body lends the camera a sturdy yet lightweight feel, but there’s no hand grip here. Coupled with the camera’s smooth-as-a-pebble surface, this makes it hard to get a firm grip when shooting handheld. As a result, the rear LCD quickly becomes covered in fingerprints as you try and steady the IXUS with both hands instead – so you’ll be constantly rubbing the screen clean.

On the IXUS 220 HS’s back is a simple slider switch allowing you to alternate between standard Smart Auto mode, which uses face and subject detection technology to compare the scene to 32 on-board presets and selects the most fitting for optimal results, and Program Auto. The latter allows a greater degree of hands-on control – a press of the ‘func/set’ button to the right of the camera’s backplate providing access to a much wider range of manually selectable options. Manual control is welcomed, but this remains a camera for those who want to point and shoot and achieve respectable results with the minimum of fuss. Photo enthusiasts wanting a more feature-packed portable model should direct their gaze towards the Canon PowerShot S95 and G12 cameras.

The Canon IXUS 220 HS does offer a few advanced skills that will be of interest to casual snappers though. Among these is a high-speed burst shooting mode for action fans, which captures up to 8fps at a lower three megapixels. If you’d rather stick at full 12 megapixel resolution then speed drops to 3.4 fps.

Speed also adds to creativity when filming video clips, thanks to the 240fps Slow Motion movie mode – although footage is shot at a low-quality 320×240 resolution. When played-back, it produces footage an eighth normal speed, giving that The Matrix-style bullet time effect. Higher-definition 640×480 pixel clips 120fps can also be captured. As in the new 310 HS model, there’s an esoteric Movie Digest mode on the camera too, which records a short video burst at the point a still image is taken and then automatically stitches these clips together to form a little movie to tell the backstory of your day.

This feature of the IXUS 220 HS may appeal to travel snappers wanting to record a bit more of their surroundings, but the camera doesn’t feature the latest must-haves of GPS, nor is it moisture resistant. However, Canon offers a couple of waterproof cases for the 220 HS, recommended pricing ranging between £55 and £225 (dearer than the camera itself!) dependent on which option you go for.

This IXUS 220 HS, like the rest of the Canon compact range, provides the ability to adjust colour tones via the function toolbar. Tucked away beyond the shooting modes, there’s also a range of digital effects that mirror those on its pricier 310 HS, taking inspiration from the ‘creative studio in a box’ Art Filters and Magic Filters of the Olympus Pen and Tough compacts.

There are the usual fisheye and pinhole camera style effects, plus a super vivid setting and monochrome for those who want to inject an artistic moodiness into shots. Our favourite was the miniature effect, which apes the result from a specialist tilt and shift lens, narrowing the portion of the image in-focus to give the illusion that you’re looking at a photograph of a model rather than an actual building, car or landscape. This can be applied to video clips as well as stills, at 1.5, three or six frames per second to provide a time-lapse movie style effect, further extending the camera’s creative uses.

The Canon IXUS 220 HS’s power switch is slightly recessed into the top plate to prevent accidental activation when handling the camera. Give this a press and with a sprightly chirp the camera almost instantly bursts into life, LCD switching on and lens defaulting to its maximum wide angle setting. The controls are well-labelled and larger than average for a camera of this size. The IXUS isn’t daunting for first-time users.

A thumb-operated slider switch swaps between Smart Auto and Program Auto capture – the latter mode providing a greater range of image tweaking options. With playback of captured snaps given its own dedicated button, a half-press of the shutter button will have you right back in shooting mode, without needing to mess around with any other dials or switches. In fact there’s no bottle top style shooting mode dial here at all – controls have been pared-down to the essentials to allow users to take and review shots quickly.

Ranged around the dial on the back are exposure compensation options (a modest /- 2EV), flash settings, display settings and focus adjustment between infinity and macro. If you’ve opted for the simpler Smart Auto instead, the focus point is decided by the camera. Pressing the exposure comp option calls up an AF tracking point instead, for those who want to maintain focus on a particular subject – for example children or pets who won’t stay still.

A press of the ‘func/set’ button in Smart Auto mode brings up a toolbar on the left side of the screen with a very limited array of options: self timer, the ability to control image aspect ratio, plus a choice of JPEG image size (Large, two Medium options, Small) and compression level (Fine or Normal) depending on how many shots you want to squeeze on to your SD, SDHC or SXHC memory card – there’s no internal memory supplied with the camera.

Flick the switch to Program mode instead and a press of the function button opens-up a rather more extensive array of options. Metering can be controlled, with the choice of flitting between evaluative, centre weighted average and spot, and it’s here we get access to the ‘My colors’ colour tone options. You can leave this set to ‘off’ whereby the camera deploys its factory presets for naturalistic results. Or alternatively you can select vivid, neutral, sepia, black and white, our favourite ‘positive film’, darker skin one, and bias individual red, green or blue colours in the frame. There’s also a further custom colour option. White balance and ISO speeds can also be adjusted, with options ranging from ISO100 up to the maximum ISO3200 setting. An auto setting is also on-hand.

The rest of the shooting modes are hidden within this same toolbar, including Movie Digest mode, dedicated portrait and “kids and pets” scene options, smile shutter, high speed burst shooting, best image selection (the camera choosing the best representation of a given scene from a sequence of shots), handheld night scene, Low Light (three megapixel resolution), plus fisheye, miniature effect, toy camera, monochrome, super vivid and poster effect. The slow motion movie clip option is also squeezed into this long list of possibilities.

While the autofocus is not lightning fast, it’s fast enough for this class of camera. Press down fully to take the shot and in single shot mode the camera takes around three to four seconds to write a maximum resolution JPEG to memory. Again, not the fastest ever but neither is it something you notice holding you up as you progress from one shot to the next.

We were very pleased with the image quality of the IXUS 220 HS. Sure, like any compact camera it has its issues with pixel fringing and loss of sharpness towards the corners of the frame heightened by that wider than average 24mm equivalent wide angle setting. But most of us will be looking dead centre at our subject, which is generally well-exposed and crisp. The camera obviously functions at its best in good daylight conditions, so is an ideal sea and sun holiday companion in that respect. However, its performance in lower lighting impressed us too, with its top ISO3200 actually being usable rather than just there to bump-up the spec list. It’s a better-than-expected result from this relatively low cost Canon IXUS.

Verdict

The Canon IXUS 220 HS continues Canon’s run of sleek, attractive pocket models and at under £200 it’s not going to break the bank. That may sound like feint praise, and indeed it is – there’s little here that we haven’t witnessed before from the range. That in itself doesn’t of course make the IXUS 220 HS a bad camera, it’s just not an especially exciting one.

It does, however, stand out from the crowd by virtue of its noise-free results at higher ISO settings, Full-HD video, HDMI output, and fun digital effects filters. It may lack the 3D mode found on Panasonic Lumix and Sony Cyber-shot models for £100 more, but in truth most of what anyone would require from a snapshot pocket camera these days is present and correct. It’s not revolutionary in any particular way, but the Canon IXUS 220 HS is a competent, consistent performer.

A selection of images taken at the camera’s incremental light sensitivity settings, using only available daylight. The IXUS 220 HS ISO range is relatively modest and straightforward, starting out at ISO100 and working its way up to ISO3200, though Canon does throw in an additional Low Light shooting mode for fully auto snapping, the caveat being that resolution falls then falls to three megapixels. Let’s see how well the Canon copes…

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With the camera’s Auto ISO setting choosing the lowest manually selectable option of ISO100, as expected detail is good, the shot is crisp overall and there’s no noise to report in shadow areas; pretty much as expected then.

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Same lack of noise to report at ISO200, if we’ve lost a tiny bit of contrast over ISO100.

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We’re at ISO400, usually the setting at which noise begins to creep in on cheaper compacts. But again here even when zooming in close on detail we’re hard pressed to witness any degradation in the image from the Canon.

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The same test subject at ISO800, and overall the image is still fairly clean if we’re slightly losing edge definition on close inspection.

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Slightly softer again when it comes to detail examining our test image at ISO1600. But again most would be hard pressed to spot any deterioration when viewing the full frame.

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More soft at ISO3200 but not a pronounced jump in terms of noise over ISO1600. Overall the Canon 220 HS has performed very respectably in this task, giving an identical showing to the marginally pricier 310 HS which boasts the exact same ISO range.

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…And so we’ve tried shooting our test image with Low Light mode selected, which effects an image drop to three megapixels. Here the camera has itself chosen a setting which equates to ISO400, so again, no apparent noise.

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A more general selection of test shots are revealed on this page and next to act as an evaluation of the IXUS 220 HS in a variety of shooting conditions.

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This unadulterated wide angle shot at 24mm equivalent setting and straight from the 220 HS reveals a good grasp of detail centre of the frame, getting progressively softer toward the corners. Some quite alarming pixel fringing is noticeable top left of frame on the upper tree branches, even without the need for close inspection.

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By contrast a handheld maximum 120mm equivalent telephoto setting shot from the same vantage point. Detail is noticeably softer centre of frame and could do with contrast being tweaked to add some missing definition, but on the whole not at all a bad result from a pocket point and shooter.

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Another maximum wide angle shot of a closer subject with plenty of inherent detail which will give a better impression of the crispness captured in the 220 HS’ 12 megapixel shots. We’re not seeing obvious barrel distortion at this range, but corner detail is again softening.

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Our rusty gate shot reveals more detail than we might expect from a humble 12 megapixel snapper with a physically smaller lens.

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Here are some general test shots taken with the IXUS 220 HS to give an idea of performance ability when it comes to image quality, dynamic range, colour rendition and focal range.

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Lovely natural colours from the Canon in this extreme close up shot; those who do purely want to point and shoot and get decent results without spending a lot up from could do far worse than consider the Canon IXUS 220 HS.

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No we haven’t deployed the fish eye digital effect here; the illusion is merely due to the subject’s proximity to the lens at the 220 HS’ maximum 24mm equivalent wide angle setting.

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Again, when faced with plenty of colour in the frame the Canon comes up trumps in this wide angle snap. Yes, the buildings do appear to be leaning slightly, but we were shooting from a low-ish vantage point.

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By contrast a shot taken handheld towards the telephoto end of the zoom; again natural colours and a decent level of detail.

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Features

advantages

• DAB, FM, CD and iPod all in one box
• Simple, muted design
• Great sound quality

disadvantage

• Chunky remote control
• Not the most elegant design
• Limited auxiliary inputs

key specifications

• Evaluation Price: £249.99
• DAB, FM, CD, USB and iPod playback
• Separate stereo speaker layout

For some reason, the term iPod dock has become synonymous with compact all-in-one sound systems. While, of course, a dock is simply the part where your phone or MP3 player sits, and the rest can be any type of sound-making machinery. So while the Pure Contour, B&W Zeppelin and Arcam rCube have a lot to offer for their compact size, if you’re short on space and looking for a more expansive sound, the Onkyo CS-545UK should tick all the boxes on the road.

This very conventional looking mini hi-fi system may seem unassuming, but it packs a CD player, FM and DAB radios, an iPod dock and USB playback into its body and comes with a quality set of stereo speakers, so that both features are packed and ready to go right out of the box.

The central unit, which is available in either silver or black, measures 300 x 215 x 90mm and should therefore easily fit in most TV cabinets and Hi-Fi shelves, or next to your TV. It’s a bit deep for just snuggling up on a windowsill or bookshelf, but you should probably try to give a system like this a better home anyway.

The main chassis is all metal with a high quality finish in the case of the black model and a brushed aluminum finish for the silver model. Everything feels very good, and its rather heavy weight of 4.2 kg only adds to this feeling. The hole for the USB port on the front panel is a little noticeable, but nothing to worry about. Insert a USB stick into this port and you can play MP3 files on it.

Also on the front panel, from top left to bottom right, are buttons for power, input, tone/balance, eject, track skip/preset skip, stop, and play/pause, as well as controls for adjusting tone/balance and volume. All are milled from aluminum to match the chassis and anodised in the black version. They all feel securely mounted and exhibit a slight but defined click as the key drops. The tone/balance control is a notched infinity spin affair that’s wonderfully accurate, while the large volume control has a stiff but smooth infinity spin action.

Hidden behind a chunky plastic flap on top is the iPod dock, which uses standard Apple dock inserts to attach various types of iPods, as opposed to the ingenious universal docks of the B&W Zeppelin and Fatman iTube ValveDock. A choice of black ones are included, but as we’ve gotten used to, none seem to fit the latest iPods and iPhones, so you’ll need to source the correct dock adapters yourself – and an iPad won’t fit at all. It’s fully compatible with iPhones and we didn’t notice any squeaks and beeps when a phone was docked.

Other connectivity is very limited with only a headphone jack on the front and line in, video out, antenna, subwoofer pre out and speaker connections (both banana clip and bare wire are compatible) on offer. The video output is designed to send video from your iPod to your TV, but since it’s only a composite connection, the quality is so poor it’s not worth bothering with. While this system is ideal for a living room sound system, you’ll have to rely on other means to manage everything as it’s easy to set up the speakers on either side of your TV and offer most of the basic sound sources through your AV connections from sources such as Blu-ray players and Sky boxes (one solution is to connect the Onkyo to your TV’s stereo audio output and let the TV do the rest).

If you look a little closer, the 250 x 225 x 150mm speakers are sturdy constructed of fibreboard with a black textured veneer covering the top, bottom and sides. This could be mistaken for a faux wood effect but is more of a brushed metal style that looks very attractive. Each contains a pair of drivers with a 12cm woofer and 2.5cm tweeter in the front, a bass port in the back and of course the connections too. Standard fabric covers are included which can be removed if you want a slightly edgier look. All in all, they look classy and feel well made.

The power cord for the amp is hardwired so cannot be swapped out for a longer or shorter one at will, but at around a meter long it seems sufficient for most people’s needs. The same applies to the supplied speaker cables, which are quite thick and made of pure copper. They don’t have any proper connectors (although that’s typical of hi-fi gear) but are a decent 1.5m in length. You can of course easily and cheaply replace these if you need extra length.

Turn on the device and the two-line display will appear. It shows basic track, station, time and song information and is clear with good viewing angles. Some of the finer text can be a bit difficult to read in a modest living room, but general navigation is easy.

Pop a CD into the drive and the unit works as intuitively as you’d expect, with front panel controls letting you navigate to the right input, start playback, navigate through tracks and adjust the volume. However, turn on the radio or dock an iPod and you’ll be stuck without the remote.

Unfortunately, the remote control isn’t the most elegant or intuitive design we’ve come across. The angular edges, stubby shape, plastic construction, and rubber buttons all combine to make it feel a little cheap, while the layout is perfunctory at best and a bit unwieldy at worst. For example, you’re basically unable to properly control iPod playback other than skipping tracks and starting/stopping – navigating albums is a nightmare – while there are seemingly unnecessary dedicated play/pause buttons for USB, iPod and CD there. In the meantime, you’ll have to resort to the fast-forward buttons to skip through radio stations (again, something you can’t do without the remote).

You get to know its quirks over time, but how a company that makes such high-quality products in terms of performance can still come up with such a rudimentary remote control is something we don’t know. It would be nice to have backlit keys too, although that omission is more understandable given the price of this device.

Luckily, what the Onkyo CS-545UK lacks in usability (and inputs), it more than makes up for in performance. From classical music to the latest dirty beats to the most bombastic movie soundtracks, this device’s all-round sound lets it shine.

We started our test with a quick spin of our favorite CDs and were quickly impressed with its immersive stereo reproduction and warm, even tone. The lack of a dedicated subwoofer means some dance music won’t be as boomy as some might like, but twice the 40W output is more than enough to fill a house with loud, undistorted music when party time is the order of the day.

You won’t be surprised to hear, given the price of this device, that detail levels don’t quite reach truly mesmerizing levels, with the top end feeling a bit flat, but there’s more than enough to make for a very engaging and enjoyable listen.

As mentioned, navigating through radio stations can be a bit of a headache, and handling presets is almost a complete waste of time. As long as you tend to listen to the same station or two you shouldn’t fret too much, but other than that this might not be the system for you.

Moving on to movies and TV via the line input, the lack of a center channel means you don’t get the perfect dead-centre reproduction of dialogue that a surround set would give you, and again the lack of a dedicated sub results in less as defecation rumbles during explosive scenes. However, the overall experience is very enjoyable with again a warm and steady tone meaning you’ll never have trouble hearing dialogue or defending yourself when the action begins. This is certainly a great upgrade for the vast majority of standard TV speakers.

If you’re looking for alternatives, you could opt for a dedicated surround system and just plug in an iPod dock, but of course you lose the CD and radio functionality. There are a number of alternative mini systems too, but few have the built-in iPod dock or offer the same audio quality for the price. Compact all-in-one systems like the Pure Contour can’t be set up around your TV and tend to offer less impressive overall sound.

“‘Verdict”‘

While the Onkyo CS-545UK isn’t a super-slick all-in-one iPod dock, a bombastic high-end hi-fi, or a mega multi-channel surround system, it’s a great all-rounder. With DAB, FM, USB playback, an iPod dock and a CD player on board, it covers most music listening needs, while the line input and separate stereo speaker array mean you can use it as an easy upgrade to your TV’s audio can provide a complete living room audio solution. However, a somewhat cumbersome user interface prevents it from getting a higher score.

advantages

• Cheap
• Good call quality
• Attractive design

disadvantage

• Touchscreen is not very responsive
• Software is a little rough around the edges
• Bad camera

key specifications

• Touch screen
• 2 megapixel camera
• FM radio
• dual band.

The Orange Miami is a basic touchscreen phone available from Orange for just £30, but you’ll also have to pay for a £10 minimum top-up when you buy the handset. Although the phone is Orange branded, it’s actually a facelifted version of the ZTE G-N281, so it might be available on other networks in countries other than the UK.

The Miami is available in either pink or black and the design looks pretty snazzy for a budget model. The battery cover is tastefully rounded which, combined with the handset’s smaller size and light weight, makes for convenient handling. We also like the chrome effect used on the band that runs around the front edge of the phone, as well as the hardware buttons for power, volume control and camera. Complementing these physical buttons are two touch buttons at the bottom of the screen for call control functions, with the on-hook button also acting as a back button when navigating through the phone’s software.

Unfortunately, there’s no dedicated headphone jack – instead, the included headphones plug into the micro-USB port on the bottom of the phone. At least Orange included a short adapter cable with the box, which you can use to connect your own headphones to your cell phone – but then you don’t need the hands-free microphone built into Miami’s own headphones.

The phone’s software is mainly controlled via the small 2.75-inch touchscreen. But unlike most smartphones today, the Miami uses a resistive rather than an older-style capacitive display. Capacitive displays are generally much more sensitive to touch input than resistive displays, and that’s certainly the case here. In fact, the screen turns out to be one of the phone’s biggest weaknesses, as it responds inconsistently to finger presses. At times it feels quite responsive, but other times you have to press the screen multiple times to make it respond.

The handset’s user interface is similar to that of Samsung’s older mid-range touchscreen phones like the Tocco Lite. There is a single home screen with a column of quick launch icons on the left for quick access to features like phone book, text messaging, camera and internet. Tapping it will open a small submenu giving you more options. For example, when you tap the phone icon, you have the option to view call history, missed calls, received calls, or recently dialed calls. It’s a quick and effective way to jump to the types of features you’re likely to use on a daily basis.

Alternatively, you can press the soft menu button at the bottom of the screen to bring up the phone’s main menu. Here you’ll find some extras like the widget player, which is really a very basic RSS news reader, alongside an FM radio, image and video viewers, FM radio and some basic games.

Overall, the Miami’s software feels a little rough around the edges and some of the menus are difficult to understand at first. For example, we had to wonder why there are three different ways to access the music player when they all lead to the same app.

There is only about 19MB of free space in the phone’s internal memory. So if you want to use the music player, you really need to insert a microSD card into the slot under the battery cover. However, the music player is very basic as it’s really just a file browser and lacks niceties like the ability to show album art.

Predictably, the included headphones aren’t great, as they have poor bass response, but if you swap them out for your own cans, you’ll find the Miami puts out good quality audio.

Although there’s a web browser on board, we wouldn’t recommend this handset for internet use. This is not only because the web browser is rudimentary and renders pages slowly, but also because the phone lacks 3G and Wi-Fi support, so even simple web pages take ages to load.

The cameras on most budget phones are paltry, and unfortunately, the Miami’s is no different. It’s a very basic 2-megapixel shooter that lacks a flash or autofocus, but at least the camera app offers a few extra features, including a night mode, white balance presets (tungsten, daylight fluorescence, etc.), continuous shooting, and a delay timer . However, none of these extras can get over the fact that the results are poor even by budget cameraphone standards. Images tend to look quite dirty, especially around the edges of the frame, and highlights often look very burned out. Also, the shutter is slow to respond and you’ll have to hold the phone very still if you don’t want the result to be a blurry mess.

Call quality is pretty good, it’s both clear and accurate, but battery life is disappointing. It is only designed for three hours of talk time. So if you like long chats with your friends, it’s not the right phone for you.

verdict

At £40 including the £10 top-up fee, the Orange Miami is very cheap for a touchscreen phone. But even at this low price we find it difficult to recommend it, mainly because the touchscreen just isn’t responsive enough to provide a satisfying user experience. Factor in the phone’s rough and finished UI and second-rate camera, and we’d recommend looking to something like Samsung’s Toco Lite – it costs around £20 more but is a lot more user-friendly.

How we test phones

We put every cell phone we test through its paces. We use industry standard tests to properly compare features and we use the phone as our main device during the review period. We will always tell you what we find and we never accept money to rate a product.

Learn more about how we test in our Ethics Policy.

Used as our main phone during the period

Verified against respected industry benchmarks and real-world tests

Always has a SIM card installed

Tested with phone calls, games and popular apps

points in detail

• performance 5

• design 7

• value 6

• functions 5

As is so often the case with Sigma products, a lot of thought went into this lens. For example, the lens hood is divided into two, which in its shorter form fits perfectly with a full-frame sensor and, when extended, shades the reduced size of an APS-C sensor. It’s a blindingly simple idea that should be really useful.

As an f/1.4 lens, Sigma’s 85mm lens is decidedly chunky and heavy. But it is also well balanced and feels very comfortable in the hand. The manual focus ring is wide and nicely placed at the front of the lens, but its weight is a shade on the stiff side.

The AF system is fast, if not bubble-like, and uses internal focusing so there are no grip limitations when holding the lens. If required, full manual focus can be selected by sliding the AF/MF switch back with a deft movement of the left thumb.

Reversing the standard (full frame) lens hood on the lens for storage covers almost the entire length of the barrel, blocks the focusing ring and obscures the focused distance window. Of course, this isn’t ideal, but Sigma could justifiably claim that any quality-conscious user would want to mount the lens hood in a way that coverage of the barrel when stowed is largely irrelevant. All the more regrettable
the fact that the expanded form cannot be inverted at all over the lens for storage.

Technical testing has shown that this lens has been highly optimized for use between f/2.8 and f/8, where its resolution numbers comfortably exceed 0.3 cycles per pixel. The critical level of 0.25 cycles per pixel is maintained for one more f-stop on either side of the optimum range, but there’s a slight drop when the lens is wide open and even more when it’s fully closed at F16. At wide With the lens open, very slight traces of chromatic aberration could be seen that were absent at other aperture settings.

example Pictures

verdict

Overall this is a very nice lens that offers a bright viewfinder and excellent image quality, with a clever extra in the form of its dual format lens hood.

points in detail

• value 9

• draft 10

• picture quality 9

• Features 10