I agree, lower ISO shots look nice and the control offered by this camera should allow you to get consistent results. But, I guess I have been spoiled by my Fuji F31fd because ISO 400 shots look pretty rough to me. The noise is really distracting. That may be OK because I plan to continue to use the Fuji for higher ISO shots.
UCSB wrote:
I agree, lower ISO shots look nice and the control offered by this camera should allow you to get consistent results. But, I guess I have been spoiled by my Fuji F31fd because ISO 400 shots look pretty rough to me. The noise is really distracting. That may be OK because I plan to continue to use the Fuji for higher ISO shots.
I have been considering the F31fd and the G7 for quite some time for a take everywhere P&S and one thing that bothers me about the Fuji is that many images I have seen on pbase show blown highlights. I understand that the Fuji is great for indoor high ISO shots but I think it has trouble in high contrast outdoor shooting. Also, my use for a P&S is for images that probably will not be printed large so noise will not be as big of an issue for small prints. For my serious shooting, I will use my 20D - soon to be 40D. But clipped highlights on the other hand will downgrade even a small print. Plus, Raw has to help with noise and sharpening artifacts because the user has more control. Just my thoughts.
Patrick Cox wrote:
I have been considering the F31fd and the G7 for quite some time for a take everywhere P&S and one thing that bothers me about the Fuji is that many images I have seen on pbase show blown highlights. I understand that the Fuji is great for indoor high ISO shots but I think it has trouble in high contrast outdoor shooting.
The F30 had a lot of overexposure issues, no doubt about it, and a lot of "serious" photographers who use the F30 keep the Exp.Comp at -2/3 as their starting point, which seems to reduce blown highlights. But I think the F31 improved in that respect (now a largely moot point, as the F31 has been discontinued to await the F50, which by the way will take SD cards!).
But if you do mostly outdoor shooting, yes, I agree, there are better choices than the F30/31. How the F50 stacks up remains to be seen....
Patrick ... the F31fd has one button (lower right button on back) access to exposure compensation (plus aperture). You quickly learn that a -1/3 or -2/3 ev compesation will prevent clipping in bright shots. xD cards are a downside, but if you buy a 2GB type H card ($40) you get 680 max res shots on a single card. I often email shots to people and noise is definitely a concern in even the web size shots for me (just like the samples on dpreview.com).
It will be fun to put the G9 up against the humble 6.3 MP F31fd (I paid about $200 for mine after rebate).
I have 2 f31fd's, I bought a second one last week as they are being discontinued and are so good I wanted a backup
I rarely, if ever have exposure issues and the IQ up to 400ISO is nothing short of wonderful. If it had RAW it would, to me, be the perfect compact camera.
Let's see, Canon felt that they couldn't do 12 MP in the 40D presumably because the noise would be unacceptable with ~5 um pixels. Yet they go to 12 on the G9 with ~2 um pixels. Time to look for a cheap G7 on close out.
vachss wrote:
Let's see, Canon felt that they couldn't do 12 MP in the 40D presumably because the noise would be unacceptable with ~5 um pixels. Yet they go to 12 on the G9 with ~2 um pixels. Time to look for a cheap G7 on close out.
Have to agree with you on this one. Seems pretty nutty to me. At this price performance point you are starting to get people that actually have some idea what they are doing and that is going to cost them more sales than they will can from being able to advertise 12 mp.
I was going to buy a G7 but changed my mind when I found out it did not support RAW, but now that the G9 does, I will be picking one up. I like the size and look of the camera. The sample pics look okay, but I will withhold judgement until I see a wider sampling under different conditions.
Peter Dudley wrote:
I was going to buy a G7 but changed my mind when I found out it did not support RAW, but now that the G9 does, I will be picking one up. I like the size and look of the camera. The sample pics look okay, but I will withhold judgement until I see a wider sampling under different conditions.
kind of my feeling too. I pre-ordered one from amazon.com but it won't ship until 10/15 or so. S/b plenty of reviews by then.
I do take some of this angst about ISO to be sort of funny. I shot a lot of film at ISO 100 and 200, still didn't want to go to 400 because of 'grain.' Admittedly, grain looked better than chroma noise, but still....
The jpg samples of the G9 at ISO100 or so on dpreview looked pretty good. A touch of sharpening in PS (or LR) and they were really quite good.
Frankly, I think the samples look like crap. I downsized one of them to the same size as the files from my G5, and it looks about the same, if not slightly worse. And the lens is much slower on the new one...
The ISO 400 performance of the G5 was pretty bad, but I can't imagine this one would be much better in the real world.
I don't think the IQ is 'better enough' to warrant getting the G9 as opposed to an A series or an SD. At least those fit in a pocket easily.
RAW isn't important to me, I don't even shoot it on my 1D.
It's nice to see RAW make a return. Proves Canon isn't completely deaf to consumer demands.
But can I trade the bigger LCD for a bigger sensor?
Make a G10 with a 2x crop instead of a 4.7x crop, and give me a 28-85/4 lens, and I'll snap it up. I want to shoot ISO800 with a compact P&S, with no more noise than my old 300D had.
Navyblue wrote:
I'd like to know what language is that, because in another Asian language that I know, by some measure of imagination it can sound like a women's private part.
Oh yes! I think I know that language. I think my father and grandma speaks that. Are u talking about Kejia (Hakka) 客家话/客家話? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakka_%28linguistics%29
Maybe the Japanese knows this or have something sounds like this as well. In general, there are some similarity between some Chinese languages and Japanese for sure.
By the way the image sample gallery from dpreview has some ISO 400 images. http://www.dpreview.com/gallery/canong9_samples/
They looks noise to me, but I didn't compare it to the G7. So, it might well be just as bad as preiously. Hope the Fuji new FXX P&S not as bad as this.
henryng wrote:
Hope the Fuji new FXX P&S not as bad as this.
I've been looking at the F50fd ... the new Fuji ... and it is probably going to be noisy also. There are several images from the pre-release cameras floating around and I actually think that these Canon images may be better. But, the Fuji deserves to be evaluated on a real production camera. At $300, the Fuji is $200 cheaper than this Canon and doesn't have RAW.
> When you can, put it on a tripod and shoot 12 megapixels, at asa 80, and I'll be it will be pretty fantastic image quality for what it is.<
Sure, but that kind of defeats the purpose. If I have capacity to bring a tripod, just as well bring my 5D, too. The purpose of a small point and shoot is to travel light. I agree, they missed the boat by not including a wider angle.
But clipped highlights on the other hand will downgrade even a small print. Plus, Raw has to help with noise and sharpening artifacts because the user has more control. Just my thoughts.