Canon PowerShot G9 user reviews
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User reviews5
wobbo 27 February 2009
Good: Image quality, range of options, Ease of use, option to use hood and filter attachments
Bad: Not the best looking gadget in the toy box
Comment: Outstanding quality images, build like a brick, easy to use, Puts some DSL’s to shame
mcppowe57 6 September 2008
Good: Retro syle and three inch LCD
Bad: No swivel LCD
Comment: The images are mind blowing, if you can better this camera then you must spend thousands
John Kelly 5 January 2008
Good: PSPP - Point Shoot Perfect Picture
Bad: Viewing screen doesn't detach & rotate
Comment: I run a high end luxury goods company in London & when we have events or pictures to take sometimes I hire a professional photographer. My backup solution for perfect pictures is the G9.
It is built like a tank, fast as hell & can be considered your trusted companion when you are in a live must perfectly capture moment. Set on automatic & you only need to concentrate on what you want to shoot. Then, push the button and have confidence the G9 will take care of the rest to give you that perfectly recorded moment.
I just returned from a skiing/snowboarding New Years trip to Verbier Switzerland with 40 Italians, the women were so excited by the quality of the photographs & replaying them on the bright viewing screen I didn't even need to take the pictures myself. They were snapping away at everything for almost a week capturing perfect facebook shots from the trip of all of us. The G9 was surely the most superior camera in the group I was with & its physical presence only reinforces the quality of its output.
I also shot a 2min snowboarding video while I was riding which was almost 300mb, so make sure you get a high gb card if you want to shoot any video. I have the SD 4gb extreme III. I will now also get the 8GB Extreme III as I have some more snow movies I want to shoot in the coming weeks in St Moritz.
If you own the G9 it will have been one of the best purchases you've ever made.
PS My Dad is still using my passed down G5 & loving it, if he only knew about the G9...
deck37 15 November 2007
Good: I agree with the usual reviews, but....
Bad: Does NOT support RAW, when shooting from laptop.
Comment: I use this camera on a very tall tripod, connected to my laptop using canon remote capture software. This software does NOT support RAW capture for the G9. Canon have confirmed this to me. I purchased this camera purely for the support of the RAW capture to replace a P-shot PRO1 which does support raw. I imagine this problem only requires a software fix, but this otherwise excellent camera is useless to me.
adrianclark 22 October 2007
Good: Great portable alternative to a dSLR, very good image quality, full manual control, RAW shooting, face detection, image stabilisation, time lapse videos, low noise at lower ISOs, hotshoe
Bad: Noisy above ISO 400, magenta fringing, f/2.0 lens would be nicer than the f/2.8 supplied, no bulb exposure function, built-in flash is not very powerful
Comment: My Powershot G9 is a portable alternative to my dSLR. I was persuaded to buy the G9 on the basis of RAW shooting capability, full manual control, and image stabilisation. I have not been disappointed on these aspects: manual control is easy with the control wheel (much easier than using regular buttons as on other Powershots with manual controls); the image stabilisation allows you to shoot with about 1.5 stops slower shutter speeds in practice; and it's great to have the flexibility on RAW images from a compact. And of course, the G9 is much easier to carry around than a dSLR plus lenses.
Of course you can't do everything that you would do with a dSLR. It's still very difficult to produce a narrow depth of field (as with any compact), which is why I think it would have been nicer for Canon to have used the f/2.0 lens that some of the old G series cameras had. Having said that, it is possible to achieve a blurred background on portraits taken at close range at the longer focal lengths on the G9. It's also a shame that there is no bulb exposure option.
Image quality is generally very good. Noise is slightly disappointing above ISO 400, but with image stabilisation it should hopefully be possible to keep away from the higher ISOs except in very dark conditions. Colours are good; contrast is OK, sometimes a bit flat but that's easily fixed; there is some magenta fringing at highlight edges.
Overall, I'm impressed with my Powershot G9. It's allowing me to work on compositional skills much more easily - and frequently, in more different environments - than lugging around equipment and lenses for a dSLR. I think the G9 is good for people who want a portable alternative to their dSLR like me, and for people who want to take more control of their camera but don't want the trouble, bulk, and expense of separate lenses.