Canon G9 & G10

I own a slew of DSLR's and lenses, but I know absolutely nothing about the less expensive equipment Canon produces. One of my good friends is looking for camera advice, but does not want to venture into the world of the DSLR. He has the basic $100 point-and-shoot, but is dissappointed in the results.


Does anyone own the Canon G9 or G10...and does it work well? From specifications, they look like perfectly nice cameras and the refurbished G9 at Adorma fits his $350.00 budget.


I notice they can shoot in RAW and even accept external flashes...Any experience with these?

I've played around with the G9. Overall, they're great digicams. One thing that bothered me was the very slowshot-to-shot times in raw mode.


If the price difference between G9 and G10 is only $100, I suggest buying the G10. It has a much wider lens (28mm vs 35mm) and many other improvements.


The LX3 is the same price as the G10, but it has some features I prefer more. The lens is an ultra wide zoom (24mm) instead of a wide zoom (28mm). It's also one whole stop faster (f/2 instead of f/2.8). And the shot-to-shot speed in raw is up to 2.3 FPS, which is very fast for a digicam.

I have a G9, and it's a great little camera. Noisy at mid ISOs, downright awful at 1600 (see Bryan's review of the Rebel XSi at http://www.the-digital-picture.com/R...ra-Review.aspx and search for "Above are near-center-of-the-frame crops") but it is an option (80-200 is best, 400 is OK, 800/1600 are rapidly downhill). Slow from press to shoot, and definitely slow shot-to-shot, but great metering from what I've seen. I haven't shot RAW with them (for me, why bother?) but the hot shoe is very nice. I'll admit that it looks awful goofy with a "big" Speedlite 580EX2 on top, but it's got the same menuing control of the 580 (including wireless remotes!) as the 40D/1D3 and newer cameras.


In February, I did a ~1 hour lecture for a group of Christmas village collectors on "How to take better pictures of your village". I took a 32" LCD TV, a tripod, G9, video-out cable, and some handouts to the little restaurant where they meet. My goal was to help them with settings that'd be possible on some/many P&S cameras, and they were stunned to see the results. I arranged a few props from the banquet room into a display, put the G9 on the tripod and LOCKED it down, and took a series of 7 photos:


Green-box full-auto, AWB


Program, AWB, no-flash


Program, AWB, flash bounced towards ceiling using a white paper plate as a "mirror".


Program, incandescent WB (to match the room)


Program, custom WB sampled against the white paper plate


Program, custom WB sampled against a gray card (I mentioned they could get a gray card for ~$10 across the street!)


Aperture priority, f8 (for more DoF and less chromatic abberation)


I reviewed the photos and scrolled through them on the big screen. Same subject matter, different settings, and the whole room basically went "Wow!". Then, I zoomed in on a few contrasty edges and scrolled through again - the clarity and color pretty much improved with each shot. So, as always, knowing the camera can really help, but this little line of cameras has a lot of capabilities.


And I really should post the shots from that class and my prep. Oddly, Av is limited to shutter speeds of 1 sec, but Tv can go longer. I would have confused them by cheating around the settings that way (since I couldn't get to ISO 80 at f/8 at 1s), so I stuck with ISO 200.

Thanks for info. I sent my buddy the links to the Adorama refurbished section. I saw the G10 for $369 and the G9 for $349 there. Hopefully, he will pick up something that will serve hime well.