| Re: Canon's new Powershot G10
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!  | 
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