Canon PowerShot G1 Review

Overall Rating

Battery charges up completely within about 3 hours and easily lasts 1-2 days of heavy use (zooming in/out, lcd display on, continually reviewing taken shots, etc). Takes Compact flash II (I use 1Gb CF2 card). High resolution (and RAW if you need it). Menu options well laid out.

The exposure setting dial often accidentally changes as it is on the same wheel as the on/off switch. The manual focus option does not give you any indication of whether or not a subject is in focus. But really, I'm nit picking.

This digital camera is unreal. Before buying it I compared spec's and sample outputs from various digital cameras (Nikon Coolpix 990, Casio QV 3000 etc) on www.imaging-resource.com before plumping for the Canon and have not been disappointed for a second. I bought the 1GB IBM microdrive as to use the camera effectively you need a significant amount of storage and there were several reports of problems with the 340Gb microdrive.
I've just returned from a 2 week holiday in Crete with 450 high resolution images and around 20 video clips and the camera functioned superbly in the heat (in the high 30's low 40's). I mainly use the Program AE mode, switching to either shutter or aperture priority when needed. For occasional night shots I'll use the night scene mode with sync'd flash.
Time to focus seems longer than stated in the manual and I occasionally missed moving subjects with the delay. If you are expecting this using the manual focus or pre-focus would get around it but it was still irritating.
The biggest revelation was the stitch-assist mode. By using this to link several shots together (up to 26) you don't need a wide angle lens. The supplied software is unbelievable in stitching the images together with little join showing. Where there is a join, you can get rid of it using digital imaging software such as Photoshop.
It will allow photographic quality prints of up to 8"x10" and I've got more prints of this size in the 8 months I've been using this camera than in the 20 years of using various SLR's.
The camera is heavier than you'd expect for its size and does tend to warm up quite quickly (so keep the LCD display closed when you don't need it).
Q. If I lost it and got paid out the full amount from the insurance company - would I buy the G1 again?
A. Absolutely.