After a little bit of a run around by UPS, I finally received my G9 yesterday evening before dinner. Unpacking it was a joy, Canon really knows how to package things up nicely. Immediately I knew that I had a lot of re-learning to do in the space of Point and Shoot cameras.

Overall the camera is a nice size, being a little on the largish end. You definitely wouldn’t consider this a “compact” point and shoot, but it has a great comfortable heft and feel to it.

Today I headed down to the warf in Crofton with some Kaleomites to take a short photo session in the area and my G9. Shooting in RAW in AV mode, with the ND filter on.

The images came out amazingly sharp and textured. Doing a bit of pixel peeping will show that the images definitely are of 5D quality but are relatively close to a Rebel XT.

Where does the G9 die?

The exposure of the camera is lacking a bit, with it constantly over exposing the highlights. There are 3 different light metering modes, but I found that the camera consistently likes to revert back to it’s default (I don’t like it that much) which is center weighted. The on camera flash is a bit … harsh at times. Which was to be expected but I feel it still could have been better implemented.

RAW support as well seems to be lacking as of late. Lightroom will load the RAW images but seems to want to add an amazing amount of blue in the white balance of the images.

Where does the G9 shine?

If there was one area that I was blown away, it has to be in the macro mode. With a lens that can go down to F2.8 and a focus distance (from what I can tell) is about 1.5 inches. It has been so long since I’ve been able to really get so close to a subject that the end of my lens is just about touching it, so this was a great surprise!

As well with great macro features, the G9 is amazing at video. I usually never shoot video with a point and shoot. Although this camera has brought out the video man inside of me. With a great resolution of 640×480 @ 30 FPS, this captures some impressive video.

Overall?

After some initial personal grumbling about the manual settings, I have grown to love this camera already. Being a photographer who only had “large” cameras in his arsenal, this “small” point and shoot is the perfect carry around camera.

How can you go wrong with RAW support, 6X zoom (200MM), 3″ LCD and a hand full of other great features? This is a camera that I will never leave at home.