Canon G9 - The Perfect Travel Camera?

[JohnLund]

After a recent trip to Europe in which I packed a 5D + 3 lenses in a slingbag for days and miles at a time and then finally got fed up with schlepping and kept my wife's Panasonic Lumix LX1 with me all the time instead.

When I looked at the end results after the trip I found that I took three times as many shots with the 8 meg LX1 as I did with the 5D plus some of the best shots were taken with the little camera as well.

After that experience I intended to design my perfect travel camera and send a request over this forum to Canon in the hopes that they would listen and build it for me (us). With the impending release of the Powershot G9, I am hoping that they have beaten me to the punch.

My wish list would have included 12 megs of resolution, a hot shoe, and RAW + JPeg capability, all of the which the G9 is reputed to have. See the advance review here: Canon Unveils PowerShot G9 with RAW Shooting - Compact Cameras

The only thing that I would have liked to see that is missing on the G9 is wide angle through medium tele. But you can add a .75 wide angle adapter that will convert the 35mm to 26mm which should do the trick.

I really have my hopes on this camera after the disappointment of the first-off G7.

Comments?

Cheers,
John

[NillToulme]

If it had a 28mm-equivalent wide end it would have hit the mark. Without it, one might as well take something like a 400D with Sigma 18-200 OS (which is exactly what I do).

Nill

[AndrewCassino]

I found the G9 samples over on dpreview.com disappointing. Fine detail seems to be obliterated even at ISO 80. I'm hoping things are better using RAW, but I haven't found any RAW samples yet.

[Walter_Kimmel]

I shoot with a 1DII and an old D60 for when I want two bodies simultaneously (not very often). I've been waiting for a pocketable camera that approaches pro results, and would've got the G7 if it shot RAW. The G9 looks like a good compromise.

I really would prefer a bigger zoom, but the 35-210mm equivalent will do. As far as a wider angle zoom, I noticed that the specs are for a 1/1.7" CCD at a 16:1 ratio. That suggests that, since our 3:2 SLR's would be 13.5:9, the actual full image on the G9 would be wider than what the 35mm equivalent focal length would indicate.

Also, I was concerned about squeezing 2Mp more pixels onto the little CCD, but if the change was from a 3:4 aspect ratio to 16:9, it probably wouldn't increase the noise level noticeably.

Some of the "features" such as face recognition, "scene" modes, a 3" LCD I could live without, but so far, this looks like the pocket camera for me. The optical viewfinder and hot shoe are important to me, as is the syncspeed of 1/500th! (The 1DII only syncs up to 1/250th, although I usually use hi-speed sync.)

As far as the images shown as samples of the G9, I assume they were shot as jpegs, with the default processing for noise removal. I'm hoping that shooting RAW will provide a better compromise between noise removal and loss of detail. At least I would have the option of applying my choice of NR programs (Noise Ninja) to all or selected parts of the image, according to my eye rather than the camera's computer.

[JohnLund]

That's an interesting observation about the 16:9 ratio Walter.

One of the things I grew to like on the Panasonic Lumix LX1 was the 16:9 ocassional look at the world.

I continue my optimism for the G9.

Cheers,

John

[jlipkin]

I just picked up a G9 this afternoon. The focusing is much faster, and the screen is also bigger than the G7. There is no RAW software at all at this point, from what I've been told. I'll post some impressions over the weekend if anyone is interested.

[Jerry Skrocki]

The G-9 is advertised as supporting Canon proprietary Raw format (CR2). If that is the case then it should work with any raw converter.

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