I was skeptical that the new G10 offered enough to justify upgrading.  After all, the G9 is my carry around in case there is something to shoot camera, which really doesn’t happen that often.  I’ve taken a few nice things for the web with it, but spending $500 to upgrade a camera that is little used is a little illogical.

But who wants to be logical?  I was intrigued by the new lens, and decided to jump in ... bleeding edge and all that. Lots of pundits out there saying cramming that many megapixels into that small of a chip doesn’t make sense (myself included).  Buying one was the only good way to find out.

First, a few observations about the camera itself.  Side by side the G9 and the G10 are almost identical.  The diameter of the new lens is larger to achieve the wider angle.  This raises the top of the camera above the lens, creating more slope up to the hot shoe.  The grip is slightly enlarged ... not a big deal but I do like how the camera feels in my hand.

The dials on the top have changed.  The mode selection dial is now smaller and taller, but, because of the increase in distance up to the hot shoe the dial doesn’t extend above the camera.  I like the smaller size, much easier to grip and dial.  The ISO dial is now at the base of the mode dial.  The previous location of the ISO dial, above the flash, is now a manual exposure compensation dial.  More on that in a minute.

Most menus remain virtually the same.  The rear screen has greater resolution, but to be honest it doesn’t seem like a big deal. 

The battery is a new size ... very square and slightly larger.  G9 batteries will no longer work  if you have spares and upgrade to the G10.  I’m not sure the increase in size is significant enough to provide longer battery life ... I’m doubting it will.  For me G9 battery life has never been a big issue.  I don’t use it that much so I’m clueless as to  how good (or bad) the battery life is. (Update:  I may have been wrong about this one.  The rated capacity of the new G10 battery is significantly better than that of the G9, up to 1050mAH from 720mAH. That’s a significant improvement (over 30%), so even if the camera consumes more power, it seems the G10 battery life will probably be much improved.)

I though I would add some quick thoughts on image quality.  I get an overall feeling that the G10 is a notch better than the G9... it certainly seems to resolve some great detail.  Noise has improved, which helps resolution.  If you are interested in how good the image quality is I recommend two articles, both by Michael Reichmann on his site.

The first one amazingly enough is comparing the quality of 13”x19” prints from a G10 against those taken with his Hasselblad and P45 PhaseOne back.  A word of caution.  I enjoy Michael Reichmann’s writings immensely.  I rarely disagree with him.  This article is enjoyable and informative ... as long as you read it in context.  There are those lambasting him for claiming a Canon G10 is equal to a 39mp medium format digital back.  On the other extreme, there are those claiming that this proves more pixels don’t improve image quality.  The article really isn’t about either one.  His main point is that 13x19” prints from an G10 are amazing enough they rival the quality of those from a 39mp high end digital back.  Wow ... that’s impressive.  But they aren’t equal, and read in context the article doesn’t put forth either point.  (Example,   I can crop the digital back file by more than 50% and still produce a 13x19” print with equivalent quality.  I certainly can’t do that to the G10 file.)  So don’t read more into this article than he intends.  www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/kidding.shtml

The second article is also by Michael Reichman, and is very well done.  In this article he is specifically comparing the Canon G10 with Nikon’s recent RAW capable digicam, the Nikon P6000.   www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/pocket-battleships.shtml

You’ll find some good examples in his articles.  Here’s just one quick one I took of my house to test the G10, with an unsharpened 100% section.  Not a comparison with anything else, but I think you’ll agree the G10 is capturing some pretty nice detail. Note the soda can I left on the front step.  You can even see some of the color of the label.

If you are interested in seeing how much the noise has improved, I’ve got a secondary page posted.  You can check that page out here.

G9 vs G10, noise comparison

It appears that Canon may be viewing the target market for this camera a little differently.  Since they introduced RAW on the G9, it could be the camera has seen a lot of serious photographers adopting this as a carry around camera, so many of the changes seem targeted toward this type of photographer.  Moving from 35mm to 28mm equivalent seems more useful to me. Losing the difference from 140 to 210 is a little deceiving, because when using 140mm,  the increase in pixel density of the G10 actually captures the same information as the G9 did at about 170mm.  Despite the smaller pixels, noise performance is improved, which means the G10 should see improvements in dynamic range.

Another indication of Canon’s thoughts regarding their target market for this camera can be seen in the fact that the G10 comes with Canon’s professional level RAW processing software, DPP.  It could be this is just simpler and easier to support RAW in only one package.  G9 support is not included in the new version of DPP, so comparing images from each camera is a little challenging, since I have to process G9 files in ACR or Light Room, and the G10 files in DPP.  Eventually G10 support will be in ACR and Lightroom, but in the meantime using two different RAW processors may introduce variations that are not caused by the difference in the two cameras.

The one change that I really like is the before mentioned manual exposure compensation dial.  Using Expose to the Right principles is very useful with inherently noisy small digicams. Once I set my exposure mode and lock in the setting of my choice, I can view the histogram on the rear LCD screen.    With a quick turn of the dial I can move my exposure up to just below highlight clipping, pretty much nailing a perfectly exposed ETTR image.  As I pull this exposure back down to normal in the RAW processor, I’ve maximized my signal to noise ratios, achieving the lowest noise possible without using techniques such as multiple exposure HDR.  Very useful. I wish they would put this on my dSLR.

The final question is whether or not the image quality is an improvement.  While the noise it better, it’s still pretty noisy at 800 and 1600 ... perhaps too noisy to be useful most of the time.  I’m happy with the camera, and I’m not sure I’ll spend of lot of time measuring how much difference there is.  It is better, I’ve already bought it, so I’ll use it.  I know ... that won’t help anyone who is thinking of upgrading.  Hopefully someone will shoot some side by side comparisons.