[Photography] Canon Powershot G10
15 Jul 2009 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
karohemdDid a little road test this afternoon and overall, I like it. The controls are reasonably apparent to me (a non-Canon user who usually doesn't know where to put his fingers on non-Nikons). It's quite heavy and feels solid in your hands. I took a few shots with rather long shutter speeds (down to 1/8th) and was able to hold it almost as steady as I would a SLR with a lens you can use as support.
The optical viewfinder is OK but obviously no comparison to the full view from my SLR and it has no settings display. However, it is there, which is rare in compacts these days and one of my main points to look for because even the best LCD won't be visible in bright sunlight.
I've only used it in aperture priority so far and am really pleased with the handling of exposure, even with difficult situations (the window in the examples behind the cut).
Pros:
- Fully manual, in every aspect (aperture/shutter, exposure bias, flash with slow shutter/rear curtain sync etc., ISO)
- Many functions with their own dial unlike other compacts where you control everything over one menu
- deals well with difficult lighting situations
- still compact enough to fit in a pocket but feels very solid
- impressively slow shutter delay
- RAW format, which Lightroom can read. This should come in handy in difficult situations like gigs.
- Good colour accuracy/white balance
Cons:
- I don't need 14.1MP. On a compact, this is actually silly. The file size is almost 15MB in RAW which means you need a lot of memory. Good thing I have enough big SD cards from the D80.
- In full manual mode, I'd prefer a second dial for adjusting shutter speed and aperture simultaneously, without having to switch between the two.
- nothing else that isn't covered by "it's a compact".
I wouldn't recommend it to beginners because its strengths are the manual controls and the price (£352 at amazon.co.uk) is a bit steep but for photographers who want a camera to slip into their pocket for when they don't want to drag along their SLR kit, this is rather cool indeed.
All at ISO 100, aperture priority, evaluative exposure mode. No post adjustment apart from conversion to JPEG and resampling to 800x600 @ 300dpi
The detail in this is impressive, IMHO. I should try this with the D700 as comparison, actually...
The optical viewfinder is OK but obviously no comparison to the full view from my SLR and it has no settings display. However, it is there, which is rare in compacts these days and one of my main points to look for because even the best LCD won't be visible in bright sunlight.
I've only used it in aperture priority so far and am really pleased with the handling of exposure, even with difficult situations (the window in the examples behind the cut).
Pros:
- Fully manual, in every aspect (aperture/shutter, exposure bias, flash with slow shutter/rear curtain sync etc., ISO)
- Many functions with their own dial unlike other compacts where you control everything over one menu
- deals well with difficult lighting situations
- still compact enough to fit in a pocket but feels very solid
- impressively slow shutter delay
- RAW format, which Lightroom can read. This should come in handy in difficult situations like gigs.
- Good colour accuracy/white balance
Cons:
- I don't need 14.1MP. On a compact, this is actually silly. The file size is almost 15MB in RAW which means you need a lot of memory. Good thing I have enough big SD cards from the D80.
- In full manual mode, I'd prefer a second dial for adjusting shutter speed and aperture simultaneously, without having to switch between the two.
- nothing else that isn't covered by "it's a compact".
I wouldn't recommend it to beginners because its strengths are the manual controls and the price (£352 at amazon.co.uk) is a bit steep but for photographers who want a camera to slip into their pocket for when they don't want to drag along their SLR kit, this is rather cool indeed.
All at ISO 100, aperture priority, evaluative exposure mode. No post adjustment apart from conversion to JPEG and resampling to 800x600 @ 300dpi
The detail in this is impressive, IMHO. I should try this with the D700 as comparison, actually...
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no subject
Date: 15/7/09 08:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 15/7/09 09:06 pm (UTC)I have no idea how much it was, though.
A very good source of info with (also comparative) reviews is dpreview.com. I don't know enough about compacts, really.
no subject
Date: 16/7/09 08:42 am (UTC)I just wish I'd bought a less expensive one - I'm sure the quality would have been as good. Or the Lumix which performs much better in low light.
no subject
Date: 16/7/09 10:59 pm (UTC)I've seen some really good shots from gigs, though so I thought it would be cool. I really liked the controls, so I went for it.
no subject
Date: 16/7/09 09:51 am (UTC)I've used her G10, and it's not bad, it's a little limited in a number of ways, particluarly for low light conditions given its lens can only do f/2.8.
Here is an example of what I got out of it, (and as an 18MB .CR2 file) - it's also an example of my inability to keep a level horizon, but never mind :-)