This is an f14 ISO100 full sized super-fine 16 megapixel photo straight out of the 240 HS. There is obvious grain in this photo, even at ISO 100. There are some sharpening artefacts you can see where the roof meets the sky but these are well controlled. I put it here so that you can check over the whole image to see how good the resolution is over the frame. I find that in the centre of the image, despite the contrast being reduced by the f14 f-stop, the resolution is good and is doing full justice to the 16 megapixel density of the sensor (look at the writing under the right hand eaves of the central building in both the shadow and light) but getting out to even the near edges there is a dramatic fall-off in resolution. In the corners, the resolution and contrast are horrible and there is vignetting as well. Lenses are diffraction limited at these low f-stop numbers. It takes a really poor lens at this aperture to be worse in the edges and corners and to show it. This is major weakness in the lens and it is obvious that major improvements to lens design need to be done in the IXUS range.

And I have another gripe with this image. Although the resolution is good in the central region (only), at f14 the contrast is degraded. So why did it not choose a much wider f-stop number and a faster shutter speed to not only give me better contrast (which can translate into sharper looking images) but to freeze the motion of people moving in the foreground or any other motion that might have been in the frame? This choice of settings makes no sense to me.