Pixels at an exhibition

The technology behind the latest generation of digital cameras is impressive. But do they deliver the features that consumers really want? We put two models to the test

The digital-camera revolution is very much upon us. Digital cameras overtook standard film cameras some time last year in terms of volume sold. Where once you were proud to show off your new Pentax SLR with its removable lenses,to look swish now you need a great-looking digital camera. One that I put on test this week would qualify: the new Canon IXUS 330, whose sleek steel and aluminium lines are reminiscent of Leicas of old.

The digital-camera revolution is very much upon us. Digital cameras overtook standard film cameras some time last year in terms of volume sold. Where once you were proud to show off your new Pentax SLR with its removable lenses,to look swish now you need a great-looking digital camera. One that I put on test this week would qualify: the new Canon IXUS 330, whose sleek steel and aluminium lines are reminiscent of Leicas of old.

But while digital cameras might have captured the high end, they have some way to go before they'll have caught up with the total volume of film cameras. That's because camera companies sell huge numbers of disposable cameras, ideal for parties, holidays, and any time when you weren't planning to have a camera with you. But even there, the digital revolution is on the way – as I discovered with the Trust SpyC@m 300XS, which can function as a webcam, spy stills camera, or even a videocamera for very brief bursts. The SpyC@m sells for about £70, and comes with drivers for Windows 98, 2000 or Me. Users of Apple's Mac OSX can download drivers that work fine with it from www.ioexperts.com – costing $9.95, and covering dozens of different cameras.

The two cameras are at rather different ends of the price scale, and so, of course, there are differences between them. The Canon offers two megapixels, a 3x lens zoom (and 2.5x digital zoom, done with software) that is the equivalent of a 35mm to 105mm zoom, and a great deal of intelligence in the focusing and ranging software.

By contrast, the SpyC@m is so simple (there's a tiny on/off button, a choice selector on the back, and a shutter button on the top) that I got my four-year-old to help out in the testing, on the principle outlined by Groucho Marx in Duck Soup: "A child of four would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of four." And she found it eminently usable, if a bit fiddly. But adults have the same sort of problem. Unless it was just dirty, the pinhole lens did lead to pictures that had a vaguely fuzzy look.

The SpyC@m doesn't offer much in the way of pixels (only 640x480 at its best resolution, 320x240 at the lower level). But I really liked it: the flexibility (it's a webcam! It's a stills camera! It takes video clips!) is very welcome. It's also tiny – about the size of a lipstick – and comes with some useful software for Windows users, such as Netmeeting and Cool360. Plugging it in via USB to download the photos also recharges the internal battery – a neat trick. The 8Mb of memory is eminently enough for using as a digital "disposable"; you can't review the pictures you've taken, but it's great to have fun with.

It was something of a surprise, therefore, to head to the higher end of the scale, where Canon IXUS 330 costs £449, including VAT, and find that that too comes with just 8Mb of storage. It's the photographic equivalent of a 10-shot roll, or a Pentium 4 computer with 32 Mb of RAM – completely inappropriate to the product. If you're taking pictures at the maximum resolution, 1600 x 1200 pixels, you'll get seven pictures.

As a camera, the metal casing gives it a good heft, avoiding the plastic feel of some of its rivals. The controls are well laid out, too, although I found that the naming on the buttons and their diagrams wasn't intuitive. Given that on a digital camera the onboard software, and especially the layout and names of buttons, will make a big difference to whether you just take snaps or create real photographs, this seemed to be a drawback. (By comparison, Kodak cameras that I've used have had more self-explanatory settings.) The Canon does have tons of built-in intelligence for taking pictures, such as colour balance, light presets, a flash, and shutter speeds from 15 seconds down to 1/1500 seconds. The problem is that in trying to click between them, whatever picture opportunity you were thinking of could well have passed. What's more, I found getting the shutter to react annoyingly difficult, because the automatic light-balancing software wouldn't take a picture until it was happy. Surely the point about digital cameras is that you just point and click?

When it came to getting the photos from the camera into the computer, Canon has put in a lot of effort to make life easy, offering software for Windows 98, 2000, Me and XP, and every Mac OS from 8.6 to today's 10.1. Very creditable – except that it also tries to take over your computer. You can't download pictures except through Canon's own Image Browser, which has its own way of displaying information, and which, frankly, I could do without. Why does one have to pay £449 to have one's computer usurped? Agreed, the software bundle with the camera is good, but there's nothing in there or in the camera's software to make it worth spending the extra £200 over other 2-megapixel cameras.

Canon IXUS 330: www.canon.co.uk/digitalcameras/; Trust SpyC@m 300XS: www.trust.com/12604