Canon G10 Tries To Find Its Place
With the Canon G10, Canon is trying to go after the in-between market–that is, consumers who want the manual controls that a DSLR can provide but in a small-enough package that you can hold snugly in one hand.
Not everyone wants to commit to the bulk and weight of a DSLR despite the fantastic results it reveals. Most of the cameras available today are still point-and-shooters because nearly all of them lightweight and very portable. So with this model following in the footsteps of its predecessors beginning with the G7, Canon is going all out to attract this indecisive, niche segment of the market.
At first glance the G10 looks like an old-fashion rangefinder camera, the same you might find in your grandfather’s closet. The all-black camera body is made of metal. It feels good in the hands and can manage to fit in roomy pockets. Digital Photography Review writes that:
The G10 is a camera you don’t want to put down once you have picked it up. It encourages users to take pictures, and turn the dials: to experiment and have fun. This is one heck of a fun camera to use. In the hand, it inspires confidence with solid construction and secure and comfortable hand grip. The G10 quickly becomes second nature to use, which is not something that can be said of many compacts.
The 414,000 pixel LCD screen is huge, taking up most of the back side of the camera. If you need more light for your subject than the built-in flash can provide, there’s a hot shoe that can accommodate.
Although the Canon G10 has a 14.7 megapixel sensor, noise is evident at 400 ISO and higher. The G10 is not very good for low-light shots, and continuous shooting is certainly not as speedy as on a DSLR, but then again, it isn’t one. The G10 starts up in just one second.
The G10 has a 28-140mm equivalent 5x optical digital camera zoom lens with a great wide angle view. An optional teleconverter lens, sold separately, is available to bump up the maximum zoom to around 196mm. If you like close-ups, you can take shots as close as 1 cm from the subject with the macro mode. It has excellent exposure compensation settings so that the subject of your photo always looks as it should. There is even a Snow mode for winter landscapes. But there is a slight noise issue with this camera that is obvious at 100 percent crops of images.
This camera can photograph using both JPG and RAW file formats. Photos can stored on SD, SDHC, MMC, micro SD and mini SD cards, using adapters where necessary. The camera features several dedicated dials and wheels to make setting the full manual controls simple, like ISO and exposure settings, without the need to fiddle with several menus (even though they’re fairly easy to navigate through). Even an optical viewfinder is included. You can also shoot short movie clips in AVI format with a maximum resolution of 640 x 480 at 30 frames per second.
The Canon G10 is definitely a compact camera to consider if you really like the physical aspects of taking shots manually by turning dials and so forth. But for the same price at around $500, you can get a hold of an entry-level DSLR which will take far better photos. Then again, such a camera may be too big for you to deal with all the time. There’s the rub, and the choice between the two is not going to be all that easy.
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My, my. Ain’t it such a beauty?! I hope I can save up enough for a newer canon baby, a shiny G10!