We managed to nip out on Sunday, during a rare break in our current spell of wet weather, to put our (new) Canon G11 through its paces at the Roma Street Parklands, a garden paradise and oasis located near Brisbane City Centre. The experience and results were quite interesting.
In terms of handling, the small body makes it more difficult to access the various knobs and wheels compared to what I am used to on our DSLR – I have big hands and fingers! I suspect that increased practice and usage will no doubt make me more familiar with the controls although they will probably never be as “easy” and quick to operate as a larger bodied DSLR.
The general response times of the G11 were noticeably slower than our 7D so it was quite difficult to shoot rapid sequences but again, this is quite understandable given that the G11 is not a DSLR replacement. For the heron I noticed that the G11 set the ISO to 500ASA as the bird was standing in the undergrowth in quite a gloomy area, so the grain is quite noticeable on the bird and the overall contrast is quite low – I think the 7D would have produced better data.
The bee was shot in gloomy light at 1/60 sec so I didn’t have a cat in hells chance of freezing the action as I normally do with the 580EX II flash on the 7D. It’s also taking me some time to get used to composing the shot on the articulated rear LCD as opposed to looking through the DSLR viewfinder; there is a parallax problem as initially, I tried to centre the target below the LCD rather than below the camera lens!!!
The photo showing underneath the neck of the Eastern Water Dragon (EWD) was shot at ISO800 and the noise was quite noticeable although I managed to tame it a little in Photoshop.
The other EWD shots were taken at ISO400 and ISO80 which produced much cleaner images with better contrast and colour.
Overall, I am very happy with the G11 as it is such a small, portable package, not quite “slip in your shirt pocket” but certainly easy to grab and go compared to the DSLR. With the correct subject matter, lighting and settings I think you can produce stunning results although my early experiences are that you really have to stick below ISO400 and work quite hard to “get it right in camera” as the latitude for making corrections in post processing is much less than with photos taken with the DSLR.
Cheers
Dennis
PS – I have pushed some of the data quite hard, so the photos may look overcooked?
Last edited by Dennis; 27-09-2010 at 09:19 PM.
Reason: Changed the title to avoid confusion with the Losmandy mount!
Thanks Stephen and Adam – the G11 was on special at a recent Photocontinetal Expo in Brisbane at an attractive discount price as I suspect they were making way for the G12 which was due for imminent release.
It’s really nice to have an unobtrusive, grab and go camera rather than a bag full of lenses and a heavy, bulky body!
Great shots. I found similar experiences with a G10 I bought. Kind of handy having some psuedo-DSLR features, but it's just a bit too chunky as a slip in the pocket type camera. It's definitely not compact. Ended up selling it to get one of the slim Ixus ones. From memory it's a bit noisy at the dark end of the histogram, so be careful with your exposures.
