CANON G9 : MORE THAN JUST A COMPACT

By Keith Anderson

Canon's G9 camera is the latest in their on going line of the G series that started way back in September 2000 with the release of the G1. The camera soon had a status and a following as being a great compact pro camera. Now I'm not going into the pro's and con's of the latest camera the G9, but after owning one for a few months and shooting with one I will try to offer some insight to why I brought one.

I shoot a lot of landcapes and therefore I wanted a compact that I could use all my ND Grads and Polariser on. It had to be able to use the Cokin filter system and the Canon G series has always been able to do this using Canons own lens adapter. With the adapter in place a simple 58mm Cokin adapter screws in place and there you have it.

Another reason I brought a G9 was that as a walk around camera the built in IS that Canon is so well renowned for was avaliable in the 12 megapixel compact, That means I can carry the camera in my jacket and have IS for the times I don't have a tripod around, A major plus for me with this small camera.

Morepluses fr a small compact is it will also take Canons speedights or wireless flash triggers for studio work as it has a full sized hotshoe

The G9 is also not your average plastic compact, it metal instead and is very nicely finished, this makes it seem more robust, although I'm not about to abuse it to find out exactly how robust it is.

Image quality is what you would expect from a compact camera, great at low ISO's getting noiser as you move up, I won't go past ISO 400 personally but then most my images are shot on a tripod anyway. I would comfortably print a 16x12 off the camera and thats about the limit. If you need bigger prints then this and probably no compact camera will give that to you.

Would I recommend it, my word, it will never replace a DSLR but as a walk around compact with the advantage of being able to use filters, a hotshoe and even reversed 50mm lens for macro you can't beat it.

Go try one for yourself, you may be pleasently surprised

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