I would venture to guess that most hobby photographers have no clue how to use half the features offered by their digital cameras. Most snap happy parents simply want to point, shoot and capture frameworthy (or at the very least, printable) shots of their loved ones.
If that’s the case (and you rarely stray from using your camera’s AUTO mode) then you might not be interested in purchasing the Canon PowerShot G9.
I am partial to Canon cameras and this Mother’s Day I was gifted with a Canon Powershot camera (not the G9, but another one that I plan to review in an upcoming blog) and can attest to the company’s overall strengths and weaknesses. Prior to asking for a new camera for Mother’s Day I did extensive research on various Canon cameras and found a lot to like with the G9.
For starters the G9 is a near-identical replacement to its G7 predecessor. It’s a compact 13-ounce camera that captures 12 megapixels of detail with a six-times optical zoom lens. The G9 also has a 3-inch color LCD screen (up from 2.5 inch on the G7), which offers a cool feature that senses low-light situations and automatically adjusts the contrast. The camera also comes equipped with an impressive 23 shooting modes, which brings me back to the title of this blog. Unless you are a serious photo enthusiast you likely won’t use half the modes available on this camera.
The G9 looks like a camera professional photographers would carry, but once you experiment with it you will quickly find that it is extremely functional for everyday shooting. It’s as easy to use as a simple point-and-shoot, but provides enough resolution to produce poster-size prints.
At $500, it’s a bit on the pricey side, but keep in mind you are getting a ton of features. So many, in fact, that the instruction manual looks like a pint sized encyclopedia. The options for a single shot are seemingly endless. My head was spinning when the guy at the camera store showed me how to manipulate the “My Colors” feature, which lets you specify vivid, neutral, sepia, black and white, lighter skin, or darker skin. Then, within the “vivid” setting you can choose vivid blue, vivid red, vivid green, and on and on. Then there are options such as user-selected focus zones, manual exposure settings, flash exposure compensation, light metering, video recording, and a two-hour voice memo recorder.
At that point I knew even I wouldn’t use many of the functions on a regular basis. However, I appreciate that they were included, especially the G9’s built-in sensors, which can detect when your hand is shaking while you’re composing a shot. The image-stabilization technology was certainly something I wanted included with my new camera but I knew that the G9 wasn’t the only model that offered it.
One thing I didn’t like about this camera is that when you looked through the viewfinder you could see the barrel of the extended zoom lens. I realize that these days most people simply look at the LCD screen rather than the viewfinder when taking a shot, but I’m a bit old school and prefer to have a functioning viewfinder on my camera.
The PowerShot G9 turned out to be a bit more camera than I need at this point. But if you have the money to spend and you want a digital SLR that packs a punch this might just be the camera for you.
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