Canon PowerShot G9 Digital Camera

The Canon G9 is the best compact digital camera available, but not quite perfect.

Introduction

My Canon A620 digital camera has been a faithful backup camera for over a year now. It does pretty much everything I ask of it and it's made me a big fan of Canon's A-series cameras. The next step up from this series of camera is Canon's G-series, which is supposed to be the last word in compact digital cameras. The first G-series cameras were probably the best in their day, but lately Canon has struggled a little with this particular line. I decided to give the most recent model a look and see if it was worth the investment as an upgrade to my A620. Before buying, I decided to try a friend's copy; I gave her my A620 for a couple weeks and I got to play with her G9 for a couple weeks. She is a semi-professional photographer, so I was curious to hear her opinion of my A620 as well.

Features

According to Canon USA's website, the G9 has the following general features:

- The PowerShot Powerhouse: A class-leading 12.1 Megapixel digital camera with unique Canon DIGIC III Image Processor, 6x Optical Zoom and Optical Image Stabilizer.

- Full range of shooting and recording modes including JPEG and RAW for the ultimate in creative control.

- Optical viewfinder plus large high-quality 3.0-inch PureColor LCD II screen for bright, accurate color with greater viewing from a wider angle and with an anti-glare, anti-scratch coating.

- Genuine Canon Face Detection Technology sets the focus, exposure and flash automatically, leaving you free to compose a group, capture an unguarded moment, or coax the perfect smile. Plus the new Face Selector Button lets you select the primary face.

- Compatible with a wide range of accessories including EOS Speedlites, Canon supplementary lenses and a waterproof case.

- Print/Share Button for easy direct printing and downloading, plus ID Photo Print and Movie Print with select PIXMA Photo Printers, CP and SELPHY Compact Photo Printers.

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Although Canon says they have a class-leading 12.1 megapixel sensor, it is actually no longer class leading - the Nikon P5100 has the same resolution. As of December 2007, the G9 has a street price of $430 - $500 (US) from online dealers.

Performance

Build Quality

As with all of the G-series cameras, the G9's build quality is very good for a compact digital camera. The body is mostly made of metal with just a little bit of plastic here and there. It's weight is substantial for a compact digital camera, which is definitely a good thing - weight can make for much more stable images. Although the body isn't weather-sealed, my photojournalist friend tells me that she's exposed it to some light rain and snow without any problems, yet.

Ergonomics

The handling of the G9 is okay, but it could be so much better. I just can't figure out why Canon put such a worthless hand grip on this camera. Perhaps they were going for the rangefinder look, perhaps they were just cutting corners. In any case, this significantly undermines the ergonomics of this otherwise well-designed camera. The small grip on my Canon A620 is much nicer and indeed, this has always been part of my draw to the A-series line.

Otherwise, button and control dial operation is very intuitive and well-conceived. A large dial on the top right spins to select shooting mode, while a similar dial on the top left makes for quick adjustment of ISO. I struggle to explain why Canon can't do this with their professional digital SLRs. The power button is a little too recessed for my taste, but this probably does prevent accidental operation. The zoom dial on the top left is a little small, but still easy to operate. The shutter release button sits inside of this dial, making for short composition-to-release time. In general, I've always found Canon's compact digital camera menus fairly intuitive and the G9 is no exception. If it's not on a dial on the outside of the camera, it's pretty easy to find it with a few seconds of searching through the menu.

The LCD screen on the G9 is bright and big. Canon did a really nice job here. This is one of the largest screens available on a compact digital camera at 3.0 inches. At this size, you can actually get a reasonable idea of what your photo looks like. Thankfully, the quality of the screen is really nice as well. Even in somewhat bright conditions outside, I was able to navigate through the menus with ease, although previewing images was more difficult. Under sunny skies, this screen is better than average, but you'll still need to find some shade to really use the LCD screen efficiently.

Start-up time is just a little slow for such a high-end camera, but shutter lag is minimal. Zoom speed is pretty quick and I found it easy to go from wide-angle to telephoto pretty quickly. I find myself waiting several seconds between shots for my image to clear the buffer unless I put the camera in continuous mode. In this mode, the G9 can shoot about one frame per second, which isn't bad for a compact digital camera, but not really great either.

Autofocus Performance

Focus speed on the G9 is good for a compact digital camera. Under ideal lighting conditions, it can even approach low-end SLR speed. When the lighting isn't so ideal, the G9 can spend a lot of time trying to focus. As I expected, it focuses more quickly and accurately at wider angles and struggles the most at telephoto focal lengths. Still, it's autofocus speed is slightly better than the Nikon P5100, even if it's accuracy isn't any better. Autofocus at macro levels is reliable, even down to just a couple centimeters. Indeed, I was really impressed with the overall macro performance of this camera and found it to be similar to that of the Nikon P5100.

Image Quality

Quite frankly, the megapixel numbers game is getting old. This applies to all camera manufacturers, not just Canon. Twelve megapixels on a thumb-sized sensor? Without taking great care to make the necessary adjustments to optics, processing, and sensor geometry, this has great potential to reduce image quality, rather than improve it. Unfortunately, this is apparent on the G9. Although distortion is well controlled and I see good sharpness across my images, as I've come to expect from the G-series cameras, there are a few image quality problems.

First, and perhaps most importantly is noise. Regardless of the ISO I use, I see noise, especially in the shadows. From ISO 200 and up, it becomes easily apparent. In other words, I really only feel comfortable shooting with this camera at the very lowest ISOs. Please don't misunderstand - I wasn't expecting SLR quality images and I realize that the average amateur shooter taking a photo of their pet to put on their desktop isn't going to care about a little noise. However, this camera sells for $500, which is the same price as low-end digital SLRs that have much lower noise at ISO 400 than this camera has at ISO 100. I would also argue that Canon didn't make this camera just for pet photography. This is Canon's top-of-the-line compact digital camera with a rugged metal body. As such, it's made more for advanced amateurs, or perhaps even for professionals as a take-everywhere, back-up camera. Unfortunately, the noise characteristics of its image don't quite live up to the rest of the camera. However, because the G9 can capture RAW files, you have some options. RAW files respond quite nicely to noise reduction with photo processing software. At ISO 80 and ISO 100, I was able to completely remove the little noise that was present in this way without any loss of detail.

Two other minor image quality problems worth mentioning. I found a little more chromatic aberration than I was expecting. This is usually caused by not carefully adjusting the optical properties of the lens to the way-too-many megapixels of these newer sensors. Most of the time, chromatic aberration is well controlled but the Nikon P5100 controls this a little better for $150 less. Also, I found a few blown highlights on occasion. Again, too many megapixels on too small of a sensor reduces dynamic range and objects with a lot of reflectance will quickly "clip". All compact digital cameras suffer from this problem, including the Nikon P5100. For the price of this camera, I expected image quality to be a little higher.

All that being said, if you can live with the a little noise and occasional chromatic aberrations, the G9 is capable of producing sharp images with good color rendition and acceptable levels of distortion. Indeed, regardless of the focal length I'm shooting at, the G9's lens shines. In fact, I'd say this is about as close as you can get to a digital SLR camera without buying one.

Conclusions

With a retail price of $500, it's difficult to recommend this camera. For around the same price, you can get a Canon Digital Rebel or Nikon D40 with a cheap lens that blows away the image quality of the G9. Yes, the G9 is more compact, but you still can't quite put it in your pocket. For $300, you can get Nikon's P5100 high-end compact digital camera that has a slower lens and slower autofocusing than the G9, but similar quality, a better hand grip, and similar rugged construction.