Canon PowerShot G11

Cannonball Tree, Fairchild Gardens; 457kb

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My Canon Powershot G11 arrived three days ago and I have been able to spend a couple hours taking pictures with it. I want to share those and some preliminary comments. I bought this camera with one use in mind: street photography. The camera is the successor to a much-used 5mp Olympus C5050. That camera is on permanent loan to a friend so I cannot compare them side-by-side, but they seem to be a close if not identical form factor. Although I took many great photos with the Oly, the speed and inordinate shutter lag made it frustrating to use for street photography. I also have many shots of the sidewalk from that camera. I am happy to say that the G11 has handily overcome that little problem and is a responsive tool is worth the investment on that count alone.

Elsie Lewis, 496kb

Like many compact cameras there is a lot crammed into a small package so there are compromises. How one maker deals with those compromises is what makes one camera better for me than another. This is the first Canon camera I have ever owned. I am a Nikon shooter, so if Canon has a look and feel across the line I have missed it. Despite being mostly plastic, the camera has a solid feel and build quality is good. For a small camera it fits the hand nicely, although a textured dot to the left of the AE lock would help provide a solid grip on the camera and prevent the kind of mishaps noted in the next paragraph. But overall, controls are intuitive, conveniently placed and easy to find. The function button located in the center of the control wheel will pull up a linear menu that contains most shooting settings. There is also a programmable shortcut button that you can set for whatever menu item you wish. One of the reasons I bought this camera over say, a Panasonic counterpart is the optical viewfinder. Yes, I still like to hold a camera up to my eye and in bright sunlight, there is no other choice. As others have pointed out elsewhere, this viewfinder is nothing to brag about but for me it is quite useable. Prefacing with my shooting style leads me to one minor gripe with the G11. On the top deck left is a click-stopped exposure compensation dial. If I were designing this camera that dial would have been shutter speeds or f-stops depending on exposure mode selected. Doing so would allow you to completely shoot with the LCD monitor closed and with only four f-stops, you wouldn’t even need to look. As it stands now, you set f-stops or shutter speeds by using a rather funky, not very satisfying, difficult for big hands, wheel that surrounds the control rocker on the rear, and viewing the selected stop or speed on the LCD panel.

I have rather large hands and small cameras have a way of setting themselves contrary to my wishes when a finger accidently touches someplace it shouldn’t. In shooting mode, the rear control rocker controls four functions that I rarely use and would just have soon seen on a menu. Clockwise from noon they are: Manual/Auto focus (how useable is manual focus anyway?); Flash on, off, redeye; self timer; and macro on/off. With so little real estate to actually grip, I find myself turning the flash on frequently. Again, you have to have the LCD panel open to see what you are selecting and turn the flash off.

There are a few other “gotchas”. You can shoot RAW+jpeg but only as default basic jpeg. In other words, you can’t shoot RAW plus B&W jpeg which is a natural for what I shoot. And if you think you are going to import RAW files through ACR think again. Canon is using a different format than the G10 and Adobe does not yet support it in CS4. So for now you need to use the Canon software if you intend to shoot RAW.

Hill Biker; 496kb

In addition to the shortcut button there are two clickstops on the mode dial where you can register custom settings covering just about all shooting options. This goes a long way toward alleviating some of the other issues noted above.

The camera delivers nicely on its promise of speed. Power-on is quick and shutter lag is negligible. The new “Quick Shot” mode also lives up to its name, however does not hold settings if you switch modes. Last but certainly not least, picture quality is above reproach. Images are beautiful and relatively noise-free up to ISO 400, with good detail, accurate color and crisp contrast.

Waterfall, handheld 1/15th; 570kb

The built-in image stabilization works very well as demonstrated by this handheld shot taken 1/15sec. However, you cannot invoke it on a per-shot basis. You can only decide whether it is on all the time, on only during a shot, on when panning, or off. This feature will really help with low-light street photography and I am anxious to put it to the test.
 

For a point and shoot camera, this one is well thought out and a cut above most consumer models. These impressions are based on only an hour or two of shooting and I will likely edit them or add to them as I become more familiar with the G11.