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Smaller, wetter & with added WiFi: Canon refuses to give up on compacts

Is there a future for compact cameras in this day and age of 41MP smartphones? There’s some debate among camera manufacturers, as companies like Olympus, Fujifilm and Sony seem to be racing to get out of point-and-shoot territory, moving themselves upmarket.

Canon, however, has just updated its various ranges of compact cameras and while the improvements are incremental, they show that the Japanese giant thinks that there’s life left in compacts yet.

For starters, there’s three new IXUS compacts in the latest announcements: they are the IXUS 155, IXUS 150 and IXUS 145. In order, the key features are a 20MP sensor with 10x optical zoom for the IXUS 155 while the other two share a 16MP sensor and 8x optical zoom.

The only apparently retrograde move is that the IXUS 145 scales back on video recording capabilities to a mere 720p HD. The more exciting announcements in the update compact camera line-up comes in the form of three other cameras. The first of which is the PowerShot SX700 HS.

Canon are proudly proclaiming the PowerShot SX700 HS as the thinnest 30x optical camera the company has made to date. It’s a lot smaller than the previous model which holds the 30x zoom title in their range, the SX510. In addition to the 30x zoom, the camera sports a 16MP sensor, WiFi and NFC with full 1080p HD video at 60 frames per second.

The PowerShot D30 is Canon’s third iteration of their waterproof camera range. The 12MP sensor and 5x optical zoom is not really a change. What is, however, the ability for the camera to go down to 25 meters, just over double the depth of the older D20. In fact, this is the best depth of any compact without a housing we are aware of to date.

The final camera in the new announcements is the long-awaited PowerShot G1 X Mark II. The original G1 X was Canon’s first compact camera to feature a significantly larger APS-C sized sensor as frequently found in DSLR cameras. It received with mixed reviews. The Mark II version is smaller, features a tilting touchscreen and an optional electronic viewfinder in the absence of the optical one seen in the predecessor.

The lens is now a 24-120mm equivalent with a faster f/2.0-3.9 aperture lens. (The Mark II also promises faster autofocus, although we’ll wait to try it out before we agree with that.) The G1 X Mark II also features WiFi and NFC bringing it into the connected age and allowing it to share images with your smartphone or tablet.

Other than the PowerShot D30’s incredible diving abilities, the PowerShot G1 X really is the only compact camera from the recent Canon announcements to really grab our interest. With a massive zoom range, better waterproofing and a bigger sensor that performs significantly better in low light are all things work considering and are what Canon is offering.

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