Whenever someone asks me to recommend a compact camera that is sleek, stylish, feature-packed and offers great quality, those from the Canon IXUS range usually spring to mind.
The 265 sits at the top of Canon's current line-up of its stylish brand (it generally refers to its more enthusiast based cameras as PowerShots).
It features a 16-million pixel CMOS sensor, which is back-illuminated for better performance in low light. It also features a Digic 4+ processor, which is a couple of generations below the latest available, but has still proven itself to be a good performer in the past.
The camera's 12x optical zoom covers a 35mm equivalent range of 25-300mm. There's also digital zoom available in the form of ZoomPlus, which boosts that up to 24x, and a further 4x digital zoom to make a combined total of 48x.
A number of different shooting modes are available, but a couple are of particular interest
A number of different shooting modes are available, but a couple that are of particular interest is Hybrid Auto, which creates a short video clip two seconds before the shutter button is pressed and combines all the clips at the end of the day for an overview of your day – a fun setting for day trips, holidays, weddings, parties and so on.
The second is Creative Shot, which automatically takes a set of five different photos each with a different digital filter applied to it.
Full HD video recording is available, as well as Wi-Fi and NFC connectivity for sharing images between devices, such as your smartphone or tablet. On the back of the camera is a three-inch 461,000 dot screen, which isn't touch sensitive.
