crazybobbles

Say hello to Eve, my lovely G9 camera

Ladies and gentleman I would like you to meet my new camera, a lovely Canon Powershot G9 compact camera. She’s new to this world and was assembled in the land of the rising sun. She’ll be my companion whenever I go to gigs where my big old DSLR is frowned upon and ridiculed. Not that it will stop me from smuggling my DSLR, I’ve got my smuggling technique down to a science (from ickle venues to stadiums and festivals), it’s just when I’m at the heart of the battlefield, the enemies (being security guards) can see me equipped with something banned from the lands of a mid sized music venues, that’s where they usually give me an earful and try to take me away from the DSLR

So in comes my backup camera, G9 (or Eve as I call her, my slender camera mistress with a HUGE 3inch LCD screen (is there such thing as camera pornography?)) She’ll handle the venues that are more strict on DSLR’s and hopefully take a few videos in the process too (you know the ones you get in youtube that you can hardly hear a thing because you’re right next to the speakers and it’s distorting the music altogether but you still listen to it).

I was considering the newer model, the G10, but after some careful reviewing, it only has a x5 zoom, and costs about £450+, so instead of splashing the same amount of money to buy ANOTHER dslr camera, I picked it’s olders and subjectively more powerful sister (in terms of zooming anyway), the G9. Now brace yourselves folks, here comes the spec talk:

• It has a lovely 35-210mm f2.8-48 IS lens meaning it can do approx. x6 optical zoom (man I’m back in the days where I had to clearly define what was optical zoom and what was digital zoom!) and do a fairly good job at it with the fairly decent aperture.
• The G10 can shoot wider shots but I have my DSLR for that (and typically I won’t need wide shots during gigs).
• I think the zoom is what I’m most interested in since it’s useful for festivals and venues that require a bit of zoom to get a decent shot, if I had bought the g10 i would have to saffice with a camera that can’t zoom further than it’s older sister.
• It can take lovely 12.1 megapixel photos, nice and big for A2 prints (not that I’d ever use it, but the bigger photos mean I can crop stuff)
• It can shoot in RAW to ensure jpg compression and what not won’t degrade the quality of the photos, that’s a big plus folks.
• It takes SDHC cards meaning I’m going to fit it with a lovely 4gb Extreme III card so it can handle all the RAW goodness, tempted to get a 8gb Ultra II card but I prefer 2x 4gb Extreme III cards than a 1x 8gb Ultra II card.
• It can do some pretty cool macro photography (though most compacts do that)
• It can shoot videos in both 640×480 res mode or better yet, lovely time lapse mode (see awesome example of time lapse videos).
• It has a lovely huge 3 inch LCD screen for viewing photos, it also has acceellleerroomeetteerr built in so i can tilt the camera portrait and landscape and the photos will rotate to that direction (useful for viewing portrait photos).
• It’s a lovely solid metal camera, it feels pretty heavy but in a “YEAAAAAAAH DEPTH OF FIELD!” kind of way?
• It has a horseshoe (same as my Canon DSLR) and attachments for tele and wide convertors so it can look like a right monster if you had them handy.
• It uses the same battery as my DSLR meaning if one of them dies, I can switch batteries just like that and BOOM! More photo taking.
• It black, so it looks cooler and ninja like compared to other compacts.

The camera came with a free Lowepro bag but sadly that DOESNT fit (stupid Amazon giving away useless accessories for free). No matter anyway since I bought some lovely warranty for the camera which means I’m able to throw it into someone’s face and have it repaired or replaced the following day, it’s lovely that the phrase “dont let me use my warranty on you” is still relelvant with my compact.

So yeah, that’s the story of my camera hunt, I was considering the Nikon P6000 and the Lumix TZ5 but opted for Canon for it’s sexy black looks, its higher image processing quality, and the fact that it actually shares quite a lot of things with my DSLR. If you’re looking for a compact camera, than the G9 is definitely the one that will turn faces and stuff. I’m also looking forward in doing some super geeky stuff and having the firmware enhanced with this thing we shall call CHDK. Have a look into it if you own a Canon camera as it makes your camera shoot in raw, use settings that the original firmware doesnt have and have more flexibility on your shutter speeds and what not. Mine is in the process of being ported so fingers crossed on that.

So yeah, say hello to little eve, she’ll be providing you with more lovely shots of gigs that I’ll be going to (I’ll most likely write an article about that soon too). Stay tuned folks.