Canon Powershot G6 - Amateur to Professional

Author's Rating:

Pros: Fold-out screen, light weight, external flash superb, high pixel count

Cons: Expensive accessories, poor low light focussing, built-in flash underpowered.

The Bottom Line: 
Excellent camera, simple for enthusiasts, sophisticated enough for pro-ams. Excellent external flash. Shame about the colour!

Author's Review
I've had the camera for about 6 months now (purchased from Ebuyer, cheapest on the 'net at the time) and in that time have taken more than 2000 shots with it.

My requirements for the camera were not straightforward.

1. It needed to be small and lightweight, but with a high enough pixel count for serious quality. In my youth I had a bag full of 35mm and 645 SLR stuff, and the number of shots I missed because I couldn't be bothered to carry the bag around.... But at the same time, there's no point taking photos if the quality is rubbish (we're talking 10"x8" prints off about half the frame here).

2. It needed to run an external flash. I also used to have my own 4-head studio light system, and now the kids are getting older I had a hankering (what with the price of school photographs) to go back to portraiture again.

3. It needed a decent lens for low-light work (i.e. you don't get camera shake the moment the sun goes in).

4. At least a 4x optical zoom (because digital zooms degrade the image).

Digital SLRs were out because of their sheer size. Most high pixel-count point-and-shoots don't have external flash synch. Most everything has a tiny aperture lens to keep the size down. In the end, the choice was one of the Fuji SLR-lookalikes, a Canon G6, or a Sony V3.

The Fuji was OK, with a mega-zoom range, but was also a mega-size. No way it would fit in a jacket pocket.

The Sony V3 was OK, nice professional shade of black, really good low-light focussing. However, the lens was of limited aperture, and I was not convinced about availability of accessories.

The Canon G6 got the best rating every time from the reviewers, had a wide-aperture 4x zoom lens (F2-F3), a full range of accessories, and an awesome pedigree (the Canon G5). I just wish they had taken the marketing executive who suggested painting it silver and buried him somewhere.

So, I became the proud owner of a G6.

ADVANTAGES:

1. External flash. The G6 takes the expensive Canon Speedlite external units, and (as I discovered, and describe in more detail below) you do need one for serious external flash work. I moaned a bit, and bought a 420EX off Ebay, but I have to say it gives PERFECT exposure every time, and is a very well manufactured unit. They are expensive because Canon have built-in a motorised zoom which automatically matches the zoom of the camera lens. I also bought an external TTL synch lead which I extended to 4m. With a photo-brolly, this is an excellent studio main light source. Adding a couple of Vivitar 285s (because these have manual flash-power adjustment) gave me a studio light set-up that lives in a gadget bag.

One additional note for any potential studio photographers out there - you cannot use a fully manual flash setup, with the camera on manual aperture/shutter. The reason is that in manual mode + external flash, the camera stops down to the set aperture as soon as you half-depress the shutter release. If you shoot at small apertures for maximum depth of field, the screen is then so dark you cannot see the subject any more!

Another note, the external synch voltage on the Canon G6 is quite low, and most older SLR-fit flashguns will blow it up. Check before use!

2. Picture Quality. At a true 7.1MP, the quality is sufficient to make anything look good. The lens is a little soft in the corners at full aperture, but is needle sharp across the range in the centre 2/3. It's also wide aperture enough that you can shoot at 50ASA for maximum quality in most daylight situations. The optical zoom is excellent, and because of the high pixel-count I've even got decent shots out of the digital zoom. I'm not convinced about the RAW format which everyone says is so much better than JPG. It takes twice the memory, is difficult to edit on a PC, and I can't honestly see any difference on the final printed shots .

3. Handling. Unlike many digital cameras where functions are hidden away in menu systems, the G6 has discrete buttons for everything. It has more buttons than the starship Enterprise. A macro-button. A flash on/off button. An adjust-the-exposure button. A change-the-ASA button. This makes use of the camera very fast, and generally pretty intuitive. The camera body is also quite chunky, with a good handgrip (at least, I haven't dropped it yet). It also comes with a dinky little remote control, and the PC software also allows you to operate the camera from the PC. On a full charge (with lots of fill-in flash) it'll easily do a 100 shots on half a battery. The fold-out screen is also a God-send. I recently took some pictures in St Peter's Basilica in Rome, where you're not allowed to put down a tripod (presumably in case you damage the marble floor) and where the lighting is dim (to prevent the paintings fading). I therefore jammed the camera against every conceivable solid surface to take exposures of around 0.5 seconds, using the fold-out screen backwards, upside down and sideways, very successfully.

4. Techie stuff. In my youth I worked as a professional technical photographer, and this camera has got everything I would expect to ever use in real life apart from an interchangeable lens system. You can even change the sharpness, contrast and saturation defaults, which is good because out of the box the camera is quite contrasty compared to some digitals I've used. I've added an external 'hood' which protects the lens mechanism, and allows me to use skylight/polarising filters. These actually came from Japan via Ebay, whence I could buy the hood and three 58mm filters cheaper than buying the polarising filter alone in the UK.

DISADVANTAGES:

1. The low-light focussing is dire. I'm not talking about a black cat in a coal cellar, either. This is normal 100W room lighting on people's faces. The camera generally gets focus if there is some sharp line or object in the frame (e.g. a hat, glasses, patterned clothing) but if it's just a face or other bland surface then it's 50:50 every time. Although the camera does tell you if it has not achieved focus (yellow not green centre square appears) if you take a chance and snap the shot anyway it will inevitably be 'not quite sharp'. To add insult to injury, the manual focus is pretty dire also. The G6 does have a blue auto-illuminator, but it doesn't work within about 1m of the subject because that close the light doesn't intersect with the lens axis, and quite frankly it does not seem bright enough for the job anyway. I bought the Speedlite 420EX in the hope that the G6 would use the 420EX auto-illuminator (which is a spectacular red laser-pattern jobbie) only to discover (once I had the manual!) that the G6 is not advanced enough to work it.

CONCLUSION:

For the keen amateur, this is versatile and easy to use, suitable for virtually any outdoor, studio or still-life subject. Large pocket-sized, high quality, and with the necessary techie bits when you need more sophisticated control. I would give it 9/10, and if Canon fixed the low-light focussing and painted it black I would give it 10/10.

I've laboured on the limitations of the external flash in this review, but at the end of the day I'm pushing the camera beyond what its designers intended, so perhaps it should not be marked down for those limitations.