New Canon G9
Yes yes, I just wrote about getting a new Canon 40D camera, but DSLRs aren’t always convenient, so it’s nice to have a point-and-shoot camera for casual use. I was initially looking at a much smaller and simpler P&S camera, but then I remembered that I’m an obsessive-compulsive control freak. Fortunately the G9 just came out, so I thought I would give it a try.
My previous point-and-shoot camera was the G2, so this is quite a step forward. The G9 takes probably half the volume of the G2, and is a lot faster at start-up and shutdown. The G9 lens is significantly smaller than the G2 lens, which actually makes it better for eyepiece-projection astrophotography. (This doesn’t matter so much to me anymore since I prefer using an SLR for astrophotography, but my solar telescope is small and the DSLR just doesn’t work so well for it, for a variety of reasons.)
The new G9 arrived last week, so yesterday I took it around the Caltech campus and snapped some photos to give it a try. Overall I think the camera is great. It’s very easy to use, and it gives me all the control that I would want. The large display is just fantastic; it really makes it simple to compose photos and to adjust various settings. The LCD doesn’t fold out like the G2 did (I guess the G7 was the first camera that didn’t have a fold-out screen), but I don’t really mind. I always think that simpler is better and more reliable.
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The maximum ISO setting of the camera is ISO1600. It’s really noisy, just like you would expect. Here are some crops of photos at various ISO settings:
ISO80
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ISO200
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ISO800
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ISO1600
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The G9 flash looks small and wimpy. I hope that this isn’t true, and I need to give it more of a test in darker conditions. It did a decent job in the situations I ran into. Here is a scene that really needed fill-flash:
Without fill-flash:
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With fill-flash:
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I read online that some people have found the G9 to produce redder photos. There is a little fountain on campus that seem to show this issue. Without flash, the photos are definitely too red. With the flash, however, the photos look correct. So this may be some simple issue with settings that I need to get straightened out.
Without flash:
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With flash:
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And finally, here is a tile:
I just think this kind of thing is neat. Have you ever noticed that the cracks always join together at approximately right angles? I have always found that fascinating. I don’t know why it works that way, but I think it’s neat.