Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
I dropped my new G10 in the mail today for an exchange -- see the previous entry for the dead pixel picture.
Having had a chance to work with the camera for a bit, I have some more-refined opinions on it. The first issue I came up against was that ridiculous viewfinder. It only shows a portion of the full frame; opinion varies between 77% and 88% depending on who you ask. Unfortunately, it suffers from sufficient parallax that it's only centered on the frame for fairly long shots (over about 20 feet away). This is always a problem with rangefinder cameras, but it seems pretty bad on this camera.
I was unable, at first, to get the diopter adjusted correctly on the viewfinder. I'm used to the adjustment being somewhere in the middle of the range, but on this camera, it was so near one end that I was convinced I was doing something wrong. The result of all this is that the viewfinder is pretty much useless for composing a picture without post-process cropping.
This means that in order to actually use the camera, you have to turn on the LCD screen. I have no aesthetic problem with this, but it's a serious power suck. Depending on who you believe, the battery's good for 250-400 shots with the LCD on, or 1000 with it off. In truth, the LCD-on battery life needs to be measured in hours, not shots, since it's the constant adjustment of aperture, focus, and video processing that really kills the battery. When the screen's off, the camera only "wakes up" to take a picture, whereas when the screen's on, it's constantly taking pictures, and just coincidentally records the one it happens to see when you hit the button.
The shutter release button, as I mentioned previously, was pretty mushy. On my other Canon cameras (this is my fourth), there was an obvious detent at the half-shutter position. Not so on this camera. There is a detent, but it was hard to feel, and more than once I accidentally tripped the shutter when I meant to set the focus and exposure. I was particularly disappointed by this, since this is supposedly a high-end camera. Hopefully the next one feels better.
My impression, despite what I just wrote, was overall positive. I found the camera to be nice to hold, and the controls to be fairly intuitive. I was beside myself with excitement when I discovered that finally, finally there's a way to create a new folder without resetting the image number. Of course, you can't include that menu item on the otherwise clever My Menu, so you still have to go digging for it. This is a serious omission, considering that I want to hit that checkbox almost every time I pick up the camera for the day.
I was impressed with the low-light performance. All the reviews go on and on about how crappy the noise is on high ISO shots, so I was really prepared for the worst. Imagine my delight when, in actual dark conditions inside a theater, the camera took some great pictures without resorting to high ISO! Image stabilization is your friend.
The LCD, once you turn it on, is incredibly clear and bright. It's even got an antireflective coating on it, something that not even my SLR has. As someone else griped, the picture looks better on the camera's screen than it ever does anywhere else. Of course, that same reviewer was also poo-pooing RAW mode, so I frankly distrust his opinions about quality (but he's right, pictures that look gorgeous on the camera lose something on the big computer screen).
I wish the camera wasn't quite so big. I made it worse by getting a large case for it, since I intend to carry it everywhere. I couldn't find a case that was sufficiently padded, capable of carrying a spare battery (the batteries are huge, like three dominoes stacked together compared to the previous single-domino sized battery), and still small. I may end up making one out of neoprene. The case I have makes the whole thing a bit too big to be practical in my shoulder bag.
Like I said, overall I'm pleased with it, and am looking forward to the replacement. If it solves the shutter button mushiness in particular, that will make me very happy. If not, I'll figure out how to live with it, but what a disappointment from an otherwise excellent camera.
Posted at 16:55 permanent link category: /misc
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater