Full Review

I had many specific reasons why I chose the G7 and my review will tell you what they were and how it performed versus my expectations. This is essentially an “in the field” review because I can’t really add anything to the already great, more technical reviews available here on Epinions. I don’t know what RAW is, I don’t care, and I won’t mention it again!

I wanted a camera to take on ski trips, and keep it under my coat to have it available on the slopes when a Kodak moment arrives. I wanted a fair amount of zoom, optical image stabilization, a good movie mode, in addition to good still pictures. With the advancement in technology over the last few years, I thought it was time get a new camera. One of my concerns is that due to my 50 something age, I almost always need reading glasses (+1.75) to see anything up close. At first I thought the digital viewfinder would allow me to see the camera’s display of its settings without needing my reading glasses. After spending some time at Circuit City, however, I came to the conclusion that it was still hard to see the little icons on the screens of the digital viewfinders, and that advantage could disappear entirely on a bright sunny day in Colorado. Consequently, I wanted an optical viewfinder.

I carefully considered and eventually ruled out the Canon S3 or the Panasonic FZ7 due to their bulky size and electronic viewfinders. Taking a fall on my skis and landing on the extra thickness of the S3 would cause a severe bruise where as the flatness of the G7, because the lens telescopes into the camera body, was a big advantage. As you realize by now, I never seriously considered an SLR due to their large size, especially with a long lens.

I wanted a lot of zoom so I could take movies of my friends bashing the moguls, and I thought the 6 to 1 zoom of the G7 would be adequate, plus I thought a 10 to 1 zoom was just too long to hold steady, even with image stabilization. This assumption proved true out on the slopes, where I would ski down the hill first, get set and wave to my friend to begin their descent. Remember, I’m a flatlander who goes west to 12,000 feet of elevation where the air is thin. I’m breathing heavily, trying to keep my balance on the side of the slope, it is cold and windy, I have to take my gloves off, and I’m trying to hold the camera steady at full optical zoom. There is no doubt in my mind that the 6 to 1 zoom was near the usable limits in this situation. Also, the optical viewfinder is the way to go here.

Operating this camera without my reading glasses was easier than I feared it might be. The icons for the various scene modes are fairly large on the back LCD screen, so I could easily pick out the snowman icon used the snow mode, even in the bright outdoors. The camera had two memory settings, but these didn’t seem too helpful for my needs on the mountain. I set the first one for indoor shots without the flash, and set the second one for exposure bracketing for scenic pictures. We had cloudy and snowy weather on the two trips I took this year, so I didn’t take too many scenic shots. I’ve learned over the years that they only turn out well on sunny days. I did take several shots in the condo’s and restaurants with the flash turned off as this is one of this cameras great strength. This camera can almost take pictures in the dark! One of the scene modes is IS0 3200, which gives you picture that appears to have near normal lighting but was taken in restaurant where the lighting is quite low. Are these pictures “noisy”? Well duh, at least you get pretty decent picture with natural lighting versus the harsh lighting a flash would create. For casual snapshots, they are fine and you avoid the “posed” look of flash generated pictures. You certainly have to hold it steady, and the image stabilization does its job, resulting in candid photos that you are glad you took. You wouldn’t want to blow these up to 16 by 20, but they make great snapshots.

A major shortcoming of this camera, for my needs at least, was the inability to use ANY exposure controls during the movie mode. The snow mode (or beach mode) setting essentially over-exposes the entire scene by about one f-stop so that the person, who is skiing against the white snowy background, is properly exposed, and the snow itself is over-exposed. Without the over-exposure, the person comes out too dark and looks almost like a silhouette against the snow. Unfortunately, when in the movie mode, you don’t have the option of selecting any of the other modes such as the snow mode. In most of the still picture modes, you can use the exposure compensation feature to over or under-expose the picture by up to two f-stops, in one-third f-stop increments. So, you can manually do what the snow mode does by using this feature. Unfortunately, this feature is also not available in the movie mode. A work-around solution was to try to arrange the movie so that the skier had some trees behind him, causing the overall picture to be less dominated by the white snow, resulting in better exposure of the skier. It is generally a very good movie mode for normal lighting situations. I usually used the standard movie mode of 640 (x 480 pixels) and 30 frames per second. I did fill up the one gigabyte high speed card I had in it, and that also used up the batteries that day. There is a compact mode of 15 fps at 160 lines, the 640 lines at 15 fps and a high-def mode of 1024 lines but only 15 fps. You can put about 8 minutes of 640/30fps on a one gigabyte card. That was plenty for my needs. You can edit the movies in the camera, chopping off either the beginning or the end, as much as you want to, and can write the shortened version on top of the old file. It also records the sound, but in these ski movies it is just the wind or the heavy breathing of the photographer.

Another shortcoming was the indicator lights next to the optical viewfinder. About 5% to 8% of men are red/green color blind and that includes me. These lights change from green to yellow or orange in different situations. All I knew was that a steady light is good, and a blinking light is warning me of something. I have no ability to tell whether it is orange or green. I can tell street lights apart with no trouble, but these little led’s, on both the camera and the battery charger, are of limited help to me. Regardless of this difficulty, I was still able to get good pictures from this camera.

The battery life was very good, and the only time it ran out was the one day when I took seven minutes of movies. I always tried to keep the camera warm, inside a fleece jack I wear under my coat which is just a gore-tex shell. I wanted to avoid condensation forming on the camera when I came inside, and I was afraid it wouldn’t operate properly if it got cold. Also, the cold would reduce the battery power. It is possible the prolonged exposure to cold, during that one day with lots of movies, contributed to the battery running out. The large LCD screen on the back is very nice to read and adequate outside. We never had an abundance of sunshine, but I suspect it would be hard to see in direct sunlight. The shutterlag was investigated by one of my friends who declared it excellent, very fast. This camera has the latest greatest Canon chip in it that can read up to five faces to give the best exposure. It puts a box around these faces on the LCD screen, so you know it really does this.

In summary, I’m pretty pleased with this camera. For me, it has the right combination of a long lens (six to one zoom), compact size, good movie mode, and it just about takes pictures in the dark. I bought it from Buydig.com because it was highly recommended here on Epinions. They did a great job, with very prompt service and a good price. I would buy this camera again, versus the competitors, without any hesitation.

If you want to see my review on Aspen and Snowmass, go here:
http://www99.epinions.com/content_88084942468