iancandler
13th of April 2010 (Tue), 21:52
I've had mine for a few weeks now and though my photography is limited these days due to my disability (the reason I had to get rid of the DSLR and move to a compact) I have still had plenty of fun.
I have however noticed a few short comings I didn't really expect in a camera in this price bracket (RRP £580 in the UK)
Some of these are glaring**to me but others just more suggestions for improvement.
The worst is Adobe, I think canon should give them a good hard kick about supporting its raw file format in all versions of photoshop and not just the latest, I was shocked to find CS3's version of camera raw doesn't and wont support the codec for the G11 and all newer camera's.
Currently short of shelling out another £200 + for CS4 or above upgrades, the only solution is to download the DNG converter which means downloading the images from the camera, converting and saving to DNG in another folder and then importing into camera raw. Long winded, time consuming and it clutters the hard drive.
I'm sorry but the canon software is fine for those that don't have photoshop but photoshop does eclipse it.
Ok here's the list.
fill in flash** - essential, especially for portraits, I was surprised it wasn't present.
F16** - Great macro mode but it needs to be able to be stopped down further.
B stop ** - Another essential left off, much needed for night and weather shots, its all very well being able to program in longish exposures but nothing beats B for lightning and star fields.
included hot shoe cover** - Absolutely gob smacked to find a naked hot shoe..its only a penny piece of plastic but it protects those expensive contacts well.
integral or clip on lens hood - Please, pretty please? terrible lens flare in direct bright sunlight .
Faster lens, F2.8 across the zoom range - Come on canon, you've done it before and at this price bracket its achievable.
programmable compensation dial so it can switch between ev compensation and flash compensation. - Now that would be really useful.
H.U.D in viewfinder - at least give us an AF box and AF confirmation please, the lack of either makes the viewfinder all but useless and just cosmetic, a nice etched frame would look really cool too. Remember there are some of us who bought the G11 for its retro look and feel as well as its pedigree and performance.
Not only that but its just about the only decent compact left that has an optical viewfinder, one of its main selling points as far as I was concerned, enough of one to sway me from a Panasonic or Olympus 4/3rds camera.
Overall I love the camera and will be looking with interest at the future of the G series.
Maybe a larger sensor? the more sensitive sensor was a smart move, those of us who use astro camera's learnt the hard and very expensive way that a more sensitive CCD with larger pixels will out perform a chip of the same size with smaller pixels as far as light gathering goes a long time ago now.
I have however noticed a few short comings I didn't really expect in a camera in this price bracket (RRP £580 in the UK)
Some of these are glaring**to me but others just more suggestions for improvement.
The worst is Adobe, I think canon should give them a good hard kick about supporting its raw file format in all versions of photoshop and not just the latest, I was shocked to find CS3's version of camera raw doesn't and wont support the codec for the G11 and all newer camera's.
Currently short of shelling out another £200 + for CS4 or above upgrades, the only solution is to download the DNG converter which means downloading the images from the camera, converting and saving to DNG in another folder and then importing into camera raw. Long winded, time consuming and it clutters the hard drive.
I'm sorry but the canon software is fine for those that don't have photoshop but photoshop does eclipse it.
Ok here's the list.
fill in flash** - essential, especially for portraits, I was surprised it wasn't present.
F16** - Great macro mode but it needs to be able to be stopped down further.
B stop ** - Another essential left off, much needed for night and weather shots, its all very well being able to program in longish exposures but nothing beats B for lightning and star fields.
included hot shoe cover** - Absolutely gob smacked to find a naked hot shoe..its only a penny piece of plastic but it protects those expensive contacts well.
integral or clip on lens hood - Please, pretty please? terrible lens flare in direct bright sunlight .
Faster lens, F2.8 across the zoom range - Come on canon, you've done it before and at this price bracket its achievable.
programmable compensation dial so it can switch between ev compensation and flash compensation. - Now that would be really useful.
H.U.D in viewfinder - at least give us an AF box and AF confirmation please, the lack of either makes the viewfinder all but useless and just cosmetic, a nice etched frame would look really cool too. Remember there are some of us who bought the G11 for its retro look and feel as well as its pedigree and performance.
Not only that but its just about the only decent compact left that has an optical viewfinder, one of its main selling points as far as I was concerned, enough of one to sway me from a Panasonic or Olympus 4/3rds camera.
Overall I love the camera and will be looking with interest at the future of the G series.
Maybe a larger sensor? the more sensitive sensor was a smart move, those of us who use astro camera's learnt the hard and very expensive way that a more sensitive CCD with larger pixels will out perform a chip of the same size with smaller pixels as far as light gathering goes a long time ago now.