I have been hearing good things about this camera and am wondering if anyone has tried it out? Having a point & shoot that can shoot raw and 12.1 mega pixels seems pretty handy!

A pro photog friend has one as his fun but serious cam - he shoots RAW. It looks pretty good up to 400 ISO. My G6 sucks at 200 and higher. As with any small chip, you're going to have less dynamic range and more noise than a DSLR, but hey it's not meant to be a pro camera.

I've been tempted numerous times by the G series and "Combat Camera" has shown stuff he shot in Afghanistan with a G3 if I am not mistaken.

I can do without the swingout LCD but wish it had wider than 35mm coverage....

Got a SD800IS last year with its 28mm coverage and opted to give up on RAW and manual controls.
Verticals at wide distort like a cheaper camera but it goes everywhere with me.

The 0.7x lens with the adapter tube gives around 24.5mm but turns the G9 into a beast.

I have been tempted to upgrade my G6 but have held out for a G10. The rumor mill (references to the G10 in the software development kit notes from Canon) is getting pretty strong indicating that the G10 will come out at the end of the summer and address some of the G9 shortcomings, so I have held off.

Doug

the RAW write speeds are UBER slow - and there is almost zero buffer when shooting RAW.

"address some of the G9 shortcomings"

which ones?

quote:

Originally posted by RD3F:
[qb] I've been tempted numerous times by the G series and "Combat Camera" has shown stuff he shot in Afghanistan with a G3 if I am not mistaken.

I can do without the swingout LCD but wish it had wider than 35mm coverage....

Got a SD800IS last year with its 28mm coverage and opted to give up on RAW and manual controls.
Verticals at wide distort like a cheaper camera but it goes everywhere with me.

The 0.7x lens with the adapter tube gives around 24.5mm but turns the G9 into a beast. [/qb]

Not too long ago an Olympus Mju II was found in many photographers bag: 35mm 2.8, sharp lens very small, but good image quality. G9 has useable 35-200mm and iso 80-400 raw and flash mount included. The iso 800 lost from the Mju II is compensated by IS in the G9. I cannot but rave about that camera. 12mp in the best useable format 3x4. Compare it with any of your 35mm film scans and the G9 keeps on amazing. Shortcoming: yes the viewfinder. Completely useless. But, put a loupe in front of the LCD and a medium format like viewfinder shows up. Even the jpegs, if exposed well, are awesome. Well, to me.

bart, I hate to disagree, but couple of months back. I got one for my wife. She thinks the IQ sucks & since we can't return it to B&H she is tolerating it. I wouldn't be surprised if she drops it down the steps after Photokina.
Like Shapps said, RAW write spped is super slow & no buffer. On our recent trip quite often we shot side by side with D2x both 12MP range & the resultant IQ is definately evident. I wouldn't buy it again nor I would recommend it.

re - Not too long ago an Olympus Mju II was found in many photographers bag: 35mm 2.8, sharp lens very small, but good image quality.
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I still like the old Olympus 5060 with its 28mm.

And oh do I miss using the clamshell film Stylus and Epics. Although only f3.5, very sharp lens and many rolls of film went through those things.

I have a G9 that I use for casual snaps. It's pretty decent, but it cannot compare to a modern dSLR. I did some casual tests from my balcony, and found that the G9 is capable at capturing roughly the same amount of detail as an 8MP dSLR at ISO100, only with more noise.

I wouldn't bother with anything over ISO 200 for anything more than 1hr lab prints.

Enough of these crappy sub sized sensors already. What we all REALLY need is a compact camera with a full frame sensor. Come on now. It can't be that hard to make one. I can think back to when I was young and I upgraded from the old Kodak 126 to a Canonet 35mm range-finder. I was totally blown away by the how much better a full piece of film looked. And no, it had nothing to do with the crappy plastic lens on the 126's. It was all about the increased film plane size. Anyone who was around then who may have doubts about this, only need to recall the 110 camera and the chunky huge grain that the pictures delivered, thanks to the tiny film frame. So yeah, let's see a full frame pocket camera. Now, when that happens, we'll stop going backwards and start moving forward again. sheesh!

yeah like why won't Leica make one of their legendary M bodies with a FF chip?

re - Canonet 35mm range-finder

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I have a couple of those Canonet QL with the f 1.7 lens...with the flash.
Picked them up as jewels from a bygone era and never intended to shoot with them, this during the film days.
Also have a couple of Rollei 35s.

As for a full frame M, I just can't see that happening in any financially meaningful way for both the consumers or the company.
Who knows how they're doing with the current offerings.

quote:

Got a SD800IS last year with its 28mm coverage and opted to give up on RAW and manual controls.
Verticals at wide distort like a cheaper camera but it goes everywhere with me.

I got the SD870IS for my girlfriend recently, and she absolutely loves having the wider 28mm equiv lens. The macro capabilities is surprisingly good. It's a great pocket camera, one I kind of wish I got for myself instead of the bulky G9.

re - I got the SD870IS for my girlfriend recently, and she absolutely loves having the wider 28mm equiv lens.

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that's a good one also and i'll probably get it when i manage to kill the 800.
it's a 800 with a 'huge' LCD made possible by eliminating the viewfinder.
800 got lots of use this month in Key West using an AquaPac (a glorified ziplock bag) at the beach with our sons in/out of the water and in the pool.

the only major gripe i have with these models is they omitted flash output control and it has only exposure compensation.
i was so used to this feature in the s50 which i gave to my dad after getting the SD800.