Labs

Canon's flagship Ixus is one of the better-looking cameras here. The 4x zoom range is wider than most and its optical image stabilisation eliminated blur in most test shots. Performance is good at 1.8 seconds between shots, and startup and autofocus times are particularly quick. Battery life is disappointing, though.

Video capture is excellent, with smooth auto exposure, high-quality stereo sound and the ability to shoot time-lapse

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videos, capturing a frame every one or two seconds to play back 30 or 60 times faster. The Motion JPEG format produces larger files than MPEG4, but it gave sharper results.

The camera put in a dependable performance in our image-quality tests. Pictures were generally crisp and sharp, though skin textures weren't quite as detailed as with the best cameras here. Colours were pleasing and portraits taken in direct sunlight were impressive, arguably thanks to Canon's face detection. It was quick and reliable at finding faces to lock on to and its habit of using the flash to cope with strong backlights proved effective, but only when the flash was enabled. With the flash suppressed, it underexposed our subject. Noise was a little higher than average and meant that the ISO 800 and 1600 settings were best avoided, although this is a precaution the automatic settings took without prompting.

There's much to like in the 950 IS, but not quite enough to earn it five stars, and its price seems a tad high.