Point and Shoot
May 3rd, 2008 by John Setzler
As I mentioned yesterday, I’m planning to add something to my camera bag during the month of May. After thinking about it at length, I have decided that it’s time to buy a really good point and shoot digital camera. I’m not very happy with the Olympus C-7000 Zoom that I have now, and not being happy with it makes me quite reluctant to ever use it for much of anything. It’s a decent camera, but it just isn’t intuitive in its operations, and I don’t use it enough to really become comfortable with it. My problem is that I want to use it a lot more than I do. A majority of the stuff I shoot can be easily done with one of these cameras, and it would eliminate a huge camera bag full of gear when I want to go out and shoot something other than sports.
The Canon G9 has several features that make it a much better option for me than what I have with the Olympus. One of the major benefits I see in the G9 is the hot-shoe flash adapter. With this feature, I can use one of my Canon external flash units on the camera if I choose. The on-cam winkers on these cameras are rarely any good, and they should only be used in a must-have photo situation. Even though it would look quite funny to put a Canon 550ex on top of this little camera, it would definitely provide adequate light when needed.
A second advantage of the G9 over my Olympus is the 12mp vs 7.1mp resolution advantage, if we can call it an advantage. 7.1 megapixels is usually enough resolution to print anything I want to print, but the additional 5 megapixels could be useful at some point. The G9 also offers RAW format, which I never use, but it would be there if I wanted it.
The G9 also offers internal image stabilization which can be a great benefit in lower light situations. Image stabilization can provide one or two stops of additional hand-holding capabilities when you would never get much more than blur without it.
One more feature that the G9 offers that my Olympus is lacking is the ability to add a lens adapter so I can put 58mm filters on the lens if I choose. The only filters I ever use on the camera are polarizers and neutral density filters, but I can’t use them effectively on the Olympus.
Last but not least, in my points of comparison that matter to me, the G9 has a monster 3″ LCD on the back. That’s huge compared to the 2″ LCD on the Olympus.
The Canon G9 has all the SLR functionality in terms of shooting modes and internal configuration. The Canon G9 and the Olympus C-7000 are basically the same size, so there is no real change there.
Someone should try to talk me out of buying this camera :)