Canon's new Powershot G10

[Jerry Skrocki]

I bought the Canon Powershot G9 when it first came out because of it's size. It goes places my 1Ds system will not. With most of the features of the SLR including raw capture, it is very easy to use. The facial recognition feature is amazing. Another undocumented feature is that you can sync an external strobe up to 1/2500 of a second.

Strobist: How To: Sync a Canon G9 at 1/2500th of a Sec

The G10 has made improvements in the areas that customers requested. The biggest complaint about the G9 was that the widest focal length was 35mm (35-210 mm). The G10 goes wider but there is a loss at the telephoto end (28-140 mm).

[David_Buzzard]

I don't know that much about point and shoots, but most of my friends highly recommend Canon G-series. I wouldn't even be in the market for one, but a burning house fell on my trusty Olympus 7070.

I like the 28mm lens, and I'm old school enough to like a view finder on my cameras. RAW is nice, but my wife hates dealing with them, so it's not a huge issue.

David Buzzard

[Martin_Doudoroff]

Originally Posted by David_Buzzard

RAW is nice, but my wife hates dealing with them, so it's not a huge issue.

Can't she just drag them into iPhoto and tap the "Enhance" button?

[Raul_Sanchez]

Anyone out there shooting with with the G10?
How is the image quality? Noisy?

[David Barry]

I had a G9 when they came out which I intended to use as a carry around camera. Unfortunately, the lens extension/cover mechanism fell apart after a couple of days of carrying it in a pouch on my belt, presumably from having been banged. Luckily I had bought it with my American Express card and was able to get all my money back. I was always somewhat equivocal on the image quality, so decided not to replace it, but just to continue to carry my old Casio EX-2750.

When the G10 came out I thought I would see how it compared. I had one of the first available and have the following comments.

The controls are excellent. I like having all the key adjustments available through the dials.

On screen controls follow the same logical layout as my wife's SD890IS and are very easy to pick up.

Display is excellent.

Viewfinder is a big improvement. My old eyes have difficulty focusing on the lcd screen without glasses, so the viewfinder is important to me. The G10 is much more accurate and closer to real field of view.

Can't say exactly how much better the noise is on the images, but it does seem to be improved. I would consider taking shots at 400 or maybe 800 ISO on the G10, that I would have been at 200 to 400 on the G8.

However, at the end of the day, I just wasn't happy enough with the quality of the images to keep the camera, and sent it back to Amazon. The thickness of the camera means that it is just too big to carry comfortably in a belt pouch, and the image quality isn't good enough to want to carry it as a shoulder camera. If I can't wear it on a belt (as I can my old Casio) and am going to have to carry a real camera, I'm much happier with the new 50D (which by the way does have much better high ISO performance than the 40D) which doesn't make the same compromises.

Why oh why can't Canon just give us a GXX with a lower pixel count and the same image quality as a 50D? Who needs 14.7MP in a walkabout camera. My 1D MkIII only has 10.1MP!

[Edmond_Terakopian]

I had a chance to shoot some pictures on a pre-production model and was very impressed with the image quality. I've detailed my thoughts here:

photo this & that: Hands On with the 5D MkII, G10 & 24mm f1.4L MkII

[Raul_Sanchez]

Thank you guys for your responses.

Raul.