The widest focal length of 36mm has only just managed to squeeze in the yacht’s sail, but the quality is good with detailed crops and only the slightest fringing and softening in the far corners and edges.

We held the camera close to the ground for this shot, where the screen’s relatively low viewing angle made it trickier to see compared to pricier models like the IXUS 870IS / SD 880IS.

The result is good though, with sharp detailed crops and no undesirable artefacts to mention.

The boost in sensitivity has ensured a sufficiently quick shutter to eliminate motion blur, but it has also resulted in a softening of fine detail when viewed at 100%.

For the best quality when viewed at 100%, you should use the A2000 at its lowest sensitivities of 80 and 100 ISO.

The camera easily locked-onto the subject’s face, but even with the largest aperture and longest focal length, the background isn’t very blurred.

The boost in sensitivity has also resulted in decrease of fine detail and an increase in visible textures when viewed at 100%. That said, it’s par for the course for most 10 Mpixel compacts, and hardly noticeable on prints.

There’s some geometric distortion here, but of greater concern, the field isn’t particularly flat. So while the middle is sharp, the edges have become soft.

Our crops, taken from the middle area, are detailed though and the increase to 400 ISO hasn’t had a detrimental effect here.

Face detection once again locked-on quickly, although could lose the subject when turned more towards a profile.

Detailed areas of the image, such as the magazine covers look ok, but where there’s flat areas of colour or shadow regions, the noise textures have now become quite apparent.

The result still looks acceptable for most prints though.

The increase in sensitivity has unsurprisingly resulted in a noticeable reduction in quality here with quite visible noise.

The crops do still contain a reasonable degree of detail, but like most compacts, 800 ISO is best reserved for smaller prints.

So again, like most compacts, 1600 ISO should be avoided unless for emergency use or small emailed images.

The A2000 IS also offers a 3200 ISO mode, but as a scene preset operating at just 2 Megapixels. You can see an example of it in our High ISO Noise results.