Canon PowerShot G10

I'll keep this short and sweet, the camera has excellent build quality, and is finished to a very high standard. The controls are well thought out, and within a week, you will be navigating with ease.

There are a great deal of features, and I agree, perhaps some you won't use, but let's not forget those people that will, I would rather have more, than less.

The image quality is excellent, and I really enjoy reviewing on the crisp screen which delivers in every way, the fact that it folds out and swivels is also a very useful touch.

The macro feature is very good, with absolute close focus which works well. My only problem is the slight lack in focal range, at 5X zoom, it could be better, but I travel a great deal, and this camera is robust, and is an excellent in the pocket solution to my full D-SLR.

I've owned and operated the Canon G10 now for a little over a year and have used it in many situations from holiday snapshots to professional advertising shoots (automotive advertising). I've done portraiture and documentary shoots and have reached a conclusion that this camera is all things to all men (and women).

I'm not going to go all technical here and discuss each specification in depth but I can comment on it's richness of features and the quality of the final product.

The first thing to hit me when I opened the box was the quality of the camera, it reminded of when I first took my trusted Leica R4 out of the box, it oozed quality and workmanship. Now I'm not saying it's Leica quality... it about 5% off that, that's all.

Canon have managed to cram features into the G10 that are not seen on anything other than professional quality cameras - you may never use these features and some have suggested they are a little wasteful, but they are there nevertheless and you never know how your hobby may expand into a job.

There is a fabulously bright 3 inch LCD screen on the back of the camera. There's a rounded window for the slightly bigger optical viewfinder ranged immediately above the LCD screen, but I find myself using the G10's LCD screen for image composition more than anything. There are a couple of advantages to this, 1.you can see the on-screen histogram to check exposure as you go, and 2. a compositional nine-square grid provides much needed assistance when framing architecture, automobiles and landscapes and when trying to get a level horizon. Screen visibility is universally good, in contrast to the optical viewfinder which appears a touch murky when used in artificial light.

The G10 powers up in about 1.5 seconds, the LCD bursting into life and the lens barrel quickly extending to maximum wide angle. A half press of the shutter button and, if AF is set to continuous mode, you immediately notice the sound of the lens searching for critical focus.

The menu is inspiring and easy to use, every possible scenario is catered for from portraits to action. There are four folders in Canons menu set-up each catering for an array of options. In spite of the chunky range of options that matches its equally chunky yet still compact frame, everything is logically placed, with controls falling easily under the finger or thumb, and the menus being bright, clear, thoughtfully laid out and easy to navigate once you are used to the scroll wheel.

The Canon Powershot G10 is similar in many ways to it's predecessor - it too is built like a battleship, it's amazingly feature-rich, it boasts a fast and truly responsive performance. The G10 offers genuine quality in shooting and handling and without any doubts it raises the bar for image quality?

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this camera for the pro or hobbyist and can guarantee you won't feel dissapointed.

Picture quality is just not up to scratch.

Far too many megapixels for the optics, and for the size of the sensor.

I have a G10 as a replacement for a faulty G9, they both suffer from soft focus, and poor focus and colour fringing around the edges.

If you want to use the automatic settings it has a fixation with F4 (as did the G9)and will hang-on to this aperture, and just keep winding up the shutter speed, this inspite of the fact that it has optical stabilisation.

Canon's IXUS range have much more intelligent automatic settings.

I don't know who has written the earlier reviews for this Canon PowerShot G10 camera and given it such poor ratings. I can only conclude that they have been living in cloud cuckoo land. This camera is GREAT. It produces excellent pictures which are on a par with a full blown DSLR. Yes the pictures are a little noisy the further up the iso spectum you go but then so are a lot of compact cameras. Under normal shooting conditions the images are first rate. The camera comes equipped with a myriad of adjustments and settings to suit the experience of the user. I thoroughly recommend this camera.

I bought this Canon Powershot G10c camera because I wanted a pocketable but high quality alternative to my DSLR for those occasions when I need to travel light. I did not want to compromise on image quality.

I stopped on the way home from the shop and fired off a lot of test shots, in reasonably good light. I got home and eagerly reviewed them on my PC. I WANTED to be pleased with them but I was SO disappointed. The image noise was unbelievable.

Next trip out I took some very nice shots at ISO80, but as soon as I got up to ISO200 the quality was deteriorating and at ISO400 it can only be described as terrible. Unbelievably bad for such an expensive camera.

The user interface is slick and impressive but I did not find it intuitive at all. I was having to think about how to change settings.

I sold it after 2 months and bought a Panasonic LX3. Please see my review of that camera on this website. Awarded 10/10.

Really wanted this camera to excel. It flopped. Kept it 2 months and sold it, losing £60. At ISO 80 the image quality was very good indeed. At ISO400 it was totally unacceptable and unusable. Why, oh Why, oh Why do they persist in cramming more and more pixels into a small sensor ? Panasonic have got the right idea - I've been waiting some weeks now to find an LX3 in stock, and when I do, it's mine.

I really like the Canon Powershot G10, just got it, it is smaller than I thought it would be, very nice LCD. My main concern is that the software does not work with my Macbook Pro and Adobe Lightroom does not support the CR2 raw image files it takes. Overall good camera, bad software.