Not Your Every Day Point and Shoot

I was able to pick up a Canon G9 "point-and-shoot" camera in early December. I had previously been carting around a little Sanyo 6MP still/video camera in my flight bag and was just not happy with the amount of noise it was generating even at ISO400.

I was looking for something that might shoot RAW and had handier controls for manual control. Menu diving is very frustrating. So after king at what was out there I settled on the Canon G9. It is not the smallest or lightest of the small cameras but then I was not intending to carry it in my shirt pocket anyway.

Some of the highlights that I really like about the G9 are:

• Good grip control and the boxiness of it does not want to go slipping out of my hand.
• The 12.1 Megapixel sensor produces very respectable prints. The "Winglet and a Prayer" picture of the month was shot with the G9 and blown printed as a 16x20 print from Mpix after it had already been cropped in CS3 to cut some of the wing out.
• The optical image stabilizer is nice. I have not figured out if it works as good as the stabilizers on the L series lenses as I can not see the "lock-on" effect the bigger lenses give you when you half-click.
• The DIGIC III processor just rocks with the color it produces. It also allows you to capture in RAW which just expands the options in postproduction. The capture speed is just fantastic. No shutter lag what soever that I can notice.
• Controls on the camera are very functional and not too cumbersome. The buttons are well spaced as to allow my ape fingers to activate each one without clicking the wrong button. The scroll wheel works very well while you must use the upper right hand button to toggle between shutter speed and aperture when in Manual mode. Of course there are many menu selectable shooting modes that are available at the press of a button.
• While I have not tried it yet the hot shoe will accept my Speedlite and be fully TTL 2 capable. None of these point-and-shooters can throw much light.
• The only real bad thing I have to say about the G9 is the noise that it produces at ISO1600. This was not a concern to me as I do very little low light with this camera.

It is clear that Canon has pointed this in the direction of the Pro/Advanced Am that does not want to lug around the DSLR and gear. It works great for me in that I can have it up in the cockpit with me to snag some really cool shots and have it on a layover that will still produce quality images.

Bottom line... Glad I got it and I'm not going to give it up.

Cya next week.

Doug