Zero Point

While planning for a recent trip to Andalucia (southern Spain) and Paris, and I decided to go light and try out a G11. I’m an analog photographer and currently I only print digitally when making test prints or cards. However a friend of mine has been showing me some good prints made from a G10, so I decided to buy a G11 for the trip. The photographic goal was simply to return from the trip with some photographs that stand up to printing as a 35mm slide would.

The Cannon G11

I have a drawer full of old Cannon powershots, and if you are in this boat too, you’ll already be familiar with the layout of the G11. It has many of the same controls and iconographics as earlier powershots, along with the usual, aperature/shutter modes, “flower mode” , “mountain mode”, et cetera. In my mind the G11 separates itself from these earlier Cannon models, and most other sub $500 compact cameras, with the following features.

• Raw image storage. This is essential, as in-camera JPEG compression will destroy your work before it exits the camera. With memory as cheap as it is now, raw mode should just be the standard output of all cameras. All photographers would be better off.
• Custom modes, switchable with a turn of a well registered nob. The G11 offers two custom modes, C1 and C2. I found this essential when I needed to quickly switch between operating modes of the camera.
• Fast shutter release. Its fast, not super fast, but generally fast enough.
• Low noise sensor. This is finally approaching film noise for low light situations. Images made at ISO 800 do look good. This was the pixel count / noise tradeoff cannon made.
• Solid metal construction. Besides the fragile twisting screen, the camera is built to last.

The downsides of the camera include:

• The view finder is only a wild approximation of what actually ends up on the sensor. This is very unfortunate; The Contax G2 did a much better job of this.
• The view finder conveys no information to the photographer whatsoever. It’s a dead viewfinder.
• If the articulating screen fails, the camera is junk.
• Focus can be confused and hop around a bit. However it is sharp once it locks correctly on the subject.
• Non-standard batteries. This is really a big oversight for a travel/backup camera. Fortunately the camera is light on the batteries if the “viewfinder” is used instead of the screen.

After using the G11 for three weeks, shooting everyday, I’d say it meets the bar of a good travel camera that can almost match the quality of a 35 mm camera shooting slide film. It’s clear where the roots of this camera are – firmly planted in the consumer camera market. Hopefully, we’ll see a continue evolution of this camera, dumping the silly twisting screen (complicated things break), standardizing the batteries, and making an active viewfinder.

Here are four images from this trip, made with the Cannon G11. I’ll but posting a more complete galleries from this trip in the near future. Three are from Paris and the other is from Andalucia, Spain.

[Click any image for a slide show.]

-Paul

Footnote

With the low price of memory, I no longer delete anything from my memory cards. I just go out and buy more digital film for $15 bucks and load it up with a few hundred more shots. The cards now serve as one of my backups.

This entry was posted Friday, January 1st, 2010 at 2:17 pm and is filed under Blog, Equipment. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.