Gingerbaker wrote:
The camera has a gorgeous 920,000 dot swiveling screen, which he pulls down to horizontal. And then he holds the cam down by his waist, and looks down at the screen, cradling the camera much like the old box reflex film cams of yore. It appeared to be a very non-intimidating way of getting intimate shots of people.
Might be a cool and effective way to take shots?
yes, people have been discovering this since the NEX came out. i'll never get another small camera that doesn't allow this, it's awesome (though it looks like it's harder to rest the g1x against your waste due to the way the screen swivels).
I am very happy with my G10 that I can shove in any jacket pocket and get sharp A3 prints from the files......so the G1X could be a hot contender for me......but at that price I will keep the G10......which I mainly use for B+W landscape/cityscapes.
Nothing earth-shattering. Similar performance to the recent Canon APS-C sensors. Roughly like a 600D with a lens permanently attached - slightly worse on account of a slightly smaller sensor. Nothing comparable to NEX performance, about the same as the new m43 sensors. Obviously a big step up from the previous Canon G-series though!
Perhaps it was just a bad copy, but, if not, the lens of the G! X is significantly less sharp than what was used on the NEX-5N or the Fuji X100.
Need to wait for the dpr review, I think, as the dpr samples look very good indeed.
DxOMark has also released its evaluation of the sensor, and the dynamic range of the G1 X compares very unfavorably to the NEX cams, and even is somewhat less than the Canon G12 and G11.
Gingerbaker wrote:
DxOMark has also released its evaluation of the sensor, and the dynamic range of the G1 X compares very unfavorably to the NEX cams, and even is somewhat less than the Canon G12 and G11.
I suppose you're talking about the peak dynamic range, i.e. the range at base ISO. But that's not the whole story. For example, already by ISO 400 the G1 X has a two-stop lead over the G12 in dynamic range (and more in practice; see below). People often shoot photos at ISO 400 while expecting good results, so this matters.
Furthermore, DxOMark reports the dynamic range using a signal-to-noise ratio of 1 for the floor, i.e. the so-called engineering dynamic range (after resampling to 8 megapixels). This isn't as useful to photographers as you might think, because it's too noisy to look good, although it can serve as a rough guide to useful performance. However, in some cases, such as between the G1 X (high base-ISO read noise, low photon-shot noise) and G12 (low base-ISO read noise, high photon-shot noise) sensors, the figures aren't directly useful. This is because the G1 X will perform much better in comparison to the G12 if a higher quality criteria is used for the bottom of the dynamic range, since then photon-shot noise becomes more important than read noise.
Thankfully, DxOMark provides full signal-to-noise ratio curves for the cameras too, though you can't compare them with the comparison widget. See here and here (click the Measurements tab, then Full SNR). And remember these curves are for pixel performance, and the G1 X has more pixels!
To sum up, the performance will be very good in practice, by most people's standards, although I do agree it's disappointing that Canon can't seem to get the base-ISO read noise down on its large sensors.
S Dilworth wrote:
I suppose you're talking about the peak dynamic range, i.e. the range at base ISO. But that's not the whole story. For example, already by ISO 400 the G1 X has a two-stop lead over the G12 in dynamic range (and more in practice; see below). People often shoot photos at ISO 400 while expecting good results, so this matters.
Furthermore, DxOMark reports the dynamic range using a signal-to-noise ratio of 1 for the floor, i.e. the so-called engineering dynamic range (after resampling to 8 megapixels). This isn't as useful to photographers as you might think, because it's too noisy to look good, although it can serve as a rough guide to useful performance. However, in some cases, such as between the G1 X (high base-ISO read noise, low photon-shot noise) and G12 (low base-ISO read noise, high photon-shot noise) sensors, the figures aren't directly useful. This is because the G1 X will perform much better in comparison to the G12 if a higher quality criteria is used for the bottom of the dynamic range, since then photon-shot noise becomes more important than read noise.
Thankfully, DxOMark provides full signal-to-noise ratio curves for the cameras too, though you can't compare them with the comparison widget. See here and here (click the Measurements tab, then Full SNR). And remember these curves are for pixel performance, and the G1 X has more pixels!
To sum up, the performance will be very good in practice, by most people's standards, although I do agree it's disappointing that Canon can't seem to get the base-ISO read noise down on its large sensors....Show more →
You're welcome. I think the DxOMark sensor data is the best we have on the web, but it's confusingly presented.
I'll take my previous post a bit further to put some numbers on things.
Using the Full SNR graphs I compared the G1 X and G12 in some more detail. If you want to do your own comparisons, remember that the pixel-count advantage of the G1 X effectively bumps its curves up by about 1.5 dB relative to the G12 curves.
Accounting for that, and looking at the graphs closely, I give the G1 X the following edge over the G12, at base ISO. A signal-to-noise difference of 3 dB is "one stop".
At 18% saturation (mid-tone): 4.3 dB
1 stop below mid-tone: 4.1 dB
2 stops below mid-tone: 3.9 dB
3 stops below mid-tone: 3.6 dB
4 stops below mid-tone: 2.7 dB
5 stops below mid-tone: 1 dB
6 stops below mid-tone: slight disadvantage
The graphs are too small to read accurately, so you might come up with slightly different figures — but they're in that range. So you can see that even five stops below a mid-tone — in deep shadow — the G1 X is still cleaner than the G12. It only finally loses its advantage around six stops below mid-tone. At this point, they're both so noisy that the winner is an academic point: it's useful for reading a car's number plate at a police checkpoint, perhaps, but not useful for filling your photos with rich shadow detail.
The G1 X also has a roughly 1⁄3-stop sensitivity advantage at base ISO. At higher ISOs, its dynamic range advantage becomes much greater than in my base-ISO comparison above.
The G1X looks equivalent in sharpness with the Sony NEX-5N to my eye at ISO 100 and 1600, which is all I have looked at. This is good news after seeing poor resolution from the French site.
Both the G1 X and the 5N are clearly out resolved by the NEX-7.
Gingerbaker wrote:
The G1X looks equivalent in sharpness with the Sony NEX-5N to my eye at ISO 100 and 1600, which is all I have looked at. This is good news after seeing poor resolution from the French site.
Focus Numérique showed problems around 30 mm and f/5.6, whereas Imaging Resource shot their studio scene around 60 mm and f/8. That might change the performance a lot. (There's also not much detail in the corners of the Imaging Resource test scene with which to judge sharpness. Edit: I see they have more than one test scene, some of which do have corner detail.)
I have great hopes for this little camera. It's not going to be absolutely perfect in every respect, but Canon lenses typically represent the state of the art. If the lens is a bit soft in some parts of the performance envelope, then you can safely bet that's as good as it can be given the severe volume limitation.
Dpreview now has their G1 X studio test samples up, including RAW as well as jpg.. They caution that there is some lack of sharpness in the edges at the wide angle they use.
That said.... I looked at the Queen from the currency, looking at detail and noise...
Wow! Very impressive results, very close to NEX-7, good DSLR standards. Very superior to 4/3 format.
My chief concern at this point is the dynamic range of the camera. I have seen some samples on-line from owners which were not very impressive in this regard.
I have been shooting my G1 X for a two months now and I like the IQ better than my original 5D. Its a very impressive camera and for casual work I grab it instead of my 1DS3 or my D800E which are used on a tripod. The G1 X is mounted on a monopod which doubles as a hiking stick. I have no compliants about the camera. Granted its boxy and a little clunky but its smaller than a lot of SLR lenses and the IQ is great for anything that would be put on the web or printed at 10X12 or less.
I have been using a G1X for 3 months and am very impressed with it.
IQ blows away any earlier G-series camera (I have owned the G5, G7, G9 and G10 over the years) and runs very close to my 7D.
High ISO performance is outstanding for such a small camera.
Lens is on the slow side, especially towards the tele end, but the high ISO performance goes a long way towards compensating for this.
AF is slower than a modern DSLR (of course), but not bad for a small camera, and very accurate. My Oly EP3 was faster, but I sold it because it was too big with the lenses (see below).
Lens range (28-112 mm efl) covers what you'd need 2 - 3 lenses for with just about any ILC.
I got a Canon x0.7 wideangle converter which gets me down to a theoretical 21mm, but really only about 23mm before vignetting starts to encroach on 2x3 format. While the full sensor is 3x4 format, I tend to crop to 2x3 for consistency with my other cameras, except when subject really requires something different. You can use the full width at 21mm for 3:1 panaoramas.
Macro out-of-the-box is rather limited, but a +4 diopter (which I already owned) resolves that issue.
OVF is not good, but usable once you get used to the fact that it only shows about 80% of the image area. It would be a huge improvement if it displayed a frame-line, current shot settings and showed more of the scene. Oh, well ...
In the end, I think a camera like this *complements* my SLRs, while an ICL mirrorless (which is much bigger/heavier and more expensive by the time you count the lenses and other stuff you'd want) would need to be able to *replace* them, for most purposes at least. That's how I feel right now. YMMV of course.
