Initial impressions - Canon PowerShot G6

It seems it's my turn to review this latest photographic tool from Canon.

I've taken about 200 shots with this camera, and I can get a sense of its capabilities. I'm totally amazed how much detail there is even at ISO 400, and the lack of noise in my photographs. The typical Canon smoothness takes a bit of getting used to as compared to film images, but I do like the rendition.

My first thoughts on all these menus was that it would be a nightmare, but the design seems intuitive. Being used to the menu platform of Sony MiniDisc recorders, it wasn't hard to get the hang of this set-up.

The LCD screen is sweet and the swivelling feature should be a standard feature on all digital cameras. It works great in low contrast light but is useless in bright sun, but who shoots on sunny days? The optical viewfinder needs some pratice to learn how to compensate for its parallax errors, bit it can be done.

The battery life seems impressive, as I have yet to see a drop in juice after a fair amount of work. I'm guessing the power level drops fairly fast once it starts to go downhill, and that the battery performance slowly degrades after a few months of use.

The colors with the G6 are just about perfect, not too gaudy but not overkill, either. The Vivid setting really snaps things up on a cloudy day, and the other effect settings are equally useful - I love the b/w feature, as I regularly use such film. I made a few b/w prints with my HP 7960 printer and they are gorgeous. The color prints ar equally excellent.

The Zoombrowser platform seems to be OK, as it took a little getting used to, but it's effective.

Still wondering why the G6 uses the USB 1.1 connection, as this is 2004 and USB 2.0 is pretty standard.

My very short wish list would include being able to go to 28mm and a bit longer than 140mm, but keep the lens as fast and have a better lens cap design/system. Other than that, no complaints thus far.

I love my G6 but i cannot stand Zoombrowser, i hated it when i used my A20 and i hate it still now. It just takes over with no regard to your setup or preferences.

Maybe you just need to learn to use the program better. Check out the Tool/Preferences menu and the Camera/Auto Download Settings menu for example.

No - it's not very good at letting you make global preference settings. I'm sick and tired of having to reset the viewing from Zoom to Scroll whenever I hit a new folder. And they made some (some? HAH!) remarkably poor default choices in the settings. Especially the auto-d/l on connect. The user interface for ZB has been going backwards since at least 3.1.

and maybe after 3 years of using it on and off with each update i just dont like it. Choice is a wonderfull thing.

Are the problems- AF and ISO issues solved at all on G6?

What are the ISO issues?

and what AF issues

Um... on previous G series Auto Focus sucks @$$ and ISO above 100 is grainy...

Well, I can't speak for the pre-G6 era, but this camera seems to focus fairly well even in poor light and I've printed decent 8-1/2x11's with the ISO 400 setting. Yes, I can tell there is some noise but it's more than acceptable even in enlargements.

The thing with the ISO setting is 50 is about the same at 100, 100 is about the same as 200 and so on so ISO 400 is more like ISO 800 on most other camera. I have no idea why Canon do this on it would seem all Powershot cameras.

As for the AF it seems ok to me, fast and acurate.

I've noticed, also, that the sensitivity seems a bit generous. Comparing situations where I had to use Fuji CZ 800 film, I'm finding the ISO 400 setting on the G6 to be about the same. This isn't a complaint as it enhances the appeal of the G6's fast f/2~f/3 zoom, one of the big reasons I bought the camera in the first place.

I've had no real issues with ISO 400 on the G6. I've printed a couple 8x10's and they look fine.

I cannot envision why I would ever get a DSLR, despite the fact I've owned numerous film SLR's; the flip-out screen along with the fact the G6 is more likely to be with me seems to outweigh many of the advantages of a film SLR system.

AF is a bit faster, still sucks &%$!@ compared to others in this class.
CCD is still grainy after ISO 200, but lot better than G1, G2, G3, G5.
Zoombrowser sucks, so use Breezebrowser ( www.breezesys.com ).

A good improvement over the G3/G5. Not worth the upgrade if you are a current G3/G5 user. Probaby would prefer this camera to a Pro 1 if I was in the market.