… and no. The new camera is not the Nikon D700 for those curious!
Over the past few months, I’ve had a terrible time staying motivated. Yes, I admit it. And while it’s easy to blame this on a general lack of commitment to my photography, I hesitate to do so for numerous reasons. Frankly, I won’t bore everyone with the laundry list of non-photographic events going on in my life. However, I will say that the two of my biggest problems have been the overwhelming dreary weather here in Upstate New York and the fact that during the brief sunny interludes, my camera has not been handy.
Therefore, I’m taking an active interest in photography going forward and attempting to carry my camera around more.
Which brings me to my next point. Our new camera! There have been numerous times where I’d love to take my camera, but my D200 dSLR simply isn’t either practical, or it is way too intrusive. Enter the Canon Powershot G10. With the amount of hiking, walking and general outdoor activities, I did a lot of research and attempted to come up with a solution where I could shoot RAW images, I could exert a decent amount of control over shutter speed and aperture and a camera which took impeccable photos on it’s most simple settings when I want a point and shoot alternative.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that it’s no D200. However, it has a ton of pixels (14.7 Megapixels) and from what I can tell, the JPEG output is outstanding. I still haven’t had a chance to try out the RAW functionality to any extent but will do my best to report back when I have.
After a few weeks of use, I have formed a pretty decent opinion of basic operation — superb. It handles very much like a compact dSLR and with the really large 3″ rear screen, it’s sublimely simple to compose and take photos. In fact, I have found that I really crave a live-view type ability on my D200 simply for ease of composition / framing.
My other favorite feature are the two custom setting banks. In addition to the fully automatic “Auto” mode, Program mode, Shutter / Aperture Priority mode and fully manual, there are also two custom modes labeled C1 and C2 on the control dial. What these allow is for the user to select one, customize just about everything and then come back to it later. This proved especially useful for my wife last weekend when we were attempting to take photos at a theater production. For this, we wanted no flash, no focus assist lamp and automatic ISO selection. However, before and after, my wife wanted to have fully auto available. Therefore, it was simply a matter of turning the control dial and she was able to easily switch from one mode to another with no fuss. A great feature on a point and shoot camera.
I’ll attempt to offer a more complete review as I’ve used it more.