Canon G6 vs Pro1 vs Oly8080

[Yian_Huang]

I want to get a small camera for unobtrusive street photography, and am leaning towards the Canon G6.

It's small, I don't need the large zoom of the Pro1, it's fairly wide, although I'd prefer a 28mm.

But I know that a lot of people like the Oly 5060. What's up there?

(Sorry if this is a too-basic question. I've searched here and read dpreview but no concrete comparisons)

[JohnLund]

Yian...I recently bought the new G6 for the department where I work to use. Three weeks now and we all love the little camera. 7meg sensor, big rotating LCD, it makes great prints to 13x19 and is fairly intuitive to use. It's not good at fast action sports but you can add a 28mm equivalent wide angle.

I think Canon pulled the Pro1...don't know why.

JL

[Tony_Gamble]

Yian,

I moved from the G3 to the Pro 1.

The Pro 1 is useless for action shots - and pretty useless at the longer zooms.

The shutter lag is still a joke if you associate it with the word 'Pro'. Whether the zoom is soft or over prone to camera shake I have yet to decide. But it's pretty unuseable.

I didn't realise the G6 was now 7 megapixels. Not much different to the Pro 1 then.

I used the wide angle adaptor on my G3. It is cumbersome but it works as long as you are prepared to add a Voitglander (spelling probably wrong) viewfinder to the hot shoe.

So Canon have pulled the Pro 1? Not surprised. IMHO it promised more than it offered.

Tony
London UK

[Ken_Bennett]

I just picked up a Nikon 8400 for personal use. The primary selling point was the 24mm (equivalent) lens -- I love my wide angles! It has the equivalent of a 24-85mm zoom, a little slow at f/2.6-4.9, but I wanted a camera in which the lens retracts fully inside the body so I could stick the whole thing in my jacket pocket.

Like any point and shoot digital, it's a little slow. Shooting JPEG files, I can shoot at not quite 1 frame per second. With RAW files, it's about 1 frame every six seconds. (It has a so-called 'high-speed' mode, which can shoot 5 frames at 2.3 frames per second, but you have no control over it -- the viewfinder shuts down. Now, here's a question for Nikon -- if the buffer is big enough to hold 5 RAW files in this 'high-speed' mode, why do I have to wait 6 seconds between normal RAW shots? Huh?) Still, shooting JPEGs is no slower than shooting with a manual-advance film camera (remember those?) The AF is quick, and if I pre-focus, the shutter lag is very short. And the .NEF raw files make very nice 16-bit TIFFs -- not bad for a pocket camera.

So -- upsides: 24mm lens. RAW capture. Focus speed and short shutter lag. 8-megapixel files. Metal body.

Downsides: Slow lens. Slow RAW captures. Lots of noise at ISO 200 and 400, which is particularly bad given the slow lens. Requires a tripod to shoot at ISO 50 for good photos.

But man, love that 24!

Ken B