My Dream Camera

Author's Rating:

Pros: Packed with features and takes great pictures!

Cons: Optical view finder is not that great, not fast enough for sports pictures.

The Bottom Line: 
This is a great camera if you want a 4MP camera with lots of features for a great price.

Author's Review
When I first decided to get a good camera late last year, I read lots of Epinions reviews. There were a lot of features that I wanted in my camera, and it seemed like the Canon Powershot series seemed to have it all. The Epinions on the G1 were not all positive, but it seemed like everyone liked the G2 and the G3. The G3 was a little out of my price range, and considering the G2 had everything that I wanted anyway, I decided to save a little money.

I saved up my money for a few months to get this wonderful camera. I finally had the chance to purchase it from Willoughby’s for about $500, which was a lot less than some people paid for this camera when it came out.

Does it live up to expectations?

The one word answer to that question is YES! This camera takes absolutely gorgeous pictures. It takes pictures in many more situations than my HP Photosmart 315 camera did. And the pictures that it takes in your everyday situations are fabulous.

The camera is easy to learn but difficult to master. One of my favorite pictures of my daughter was taken on the day that this camera arrived in the mail. It did take me a little experimentation and reading of the manual to learn anything more than your basic point-and-shoot features, but with a little trial and error, using the special features becomes second nature. Using them to take great pictures is something that comes over time.

So what are the great features of this camera?

4 Megapixels: My older, 2.1 megapixel, camera was just not cutting it any more. It took good pictures up to size 5x7, but sometimes I wanted to do 8x10 pictures. The Canon Powershot G2 takes great enlargements. I have had 8x10 enlargements printed with absolutely no signs of pixellation. The digital photo places where I have my pictures printed say I can have them done in the next larger size without problems, but I have never tried it.

Uses Compactflash cards: This may not be a feature that is important to some people, and may even be a downside to someone who has invested a lot of money in other storage media, but this is a large plus to me, who received a $300 512MB Compactflash card for my other camera. I believe this camera also can take the microdrive, but I have never tried it.

Has a 3x optical zoom: My other camera did not have an optical zoom at all, and the digital zoom was hard to use. This camera has a 3x optical zoom that is very easy to use. The zoom feature is something that you don’t really even need to read the manual to learn how to use. It also has a digital zoom, but digital zooms can be accomplished with a program like Photoshop.

Different ISO speeds: This is a feature that I wanted but rarely use. The different speeds it can use are 50, 100, 200, and 400. They can be set in the menu, but I have never really found the need to fiddle with this much so I usually leave it alone.

Custom White Balance: This feature is available in the programmable modes. There are some preset white balance features, or you can use custom. This is a feature that I do often use, but you can use auto white balance too. If you forget to set the white balance and don’t have it on auto when you are in the programmable modes, you may find your pictures to be oddly tinted. This sometimes is not a bad thing... I have some beach pictures that are tinted blue because the white balance was off, and I actually prefer them to the later pictures taken on the same day with the correct white balance.

Macro feature: This is a nice feature too, because it allows you to take some extreme close-ups. At times it would be nice to take even closer pictures with this lens, but this is still a great feature that is nice to have above your regular point and shoot.

Interchangeability of lenses: If you don’t think the lens that comes with the camera can take pictures that are close enough, you can always go out and buy another lens. If you don’t think 3x digital zoom is good enough, you can buy more. There are some Canon lenses you can buy for this camera, but I do not know how to purchase the correct lenses and filters for this camera that are non-Canon yet. This is a feature that I would like to learn in the future.

Different colors of pictures: You can take black and white pictures, as well as sepia colored pictures. This is something that you can do in Photoshop as well, but if you don’t want the hassle of having to edit your pictures after you take them, you can do that in the camera.

I could go on and on about the various features of this camera, such as the ability to go completely manual, adjust the aperture, take movies, stitch panoramic pictures together, etc., but then I would practically be rewriting the manual to this camera.

General Use

The battery life for this camera is great. It uses a lithium battery, which lasts a long time and holds a good charge. The downside to this is you can’t just take the camera and use it right out of the box, you have to get an initial charge to it. I can take a lot of pictures with this between charges. When I’m taking a lot of pictures, it will last me at least a week. I always take pictures using the view screen, so you could probably extend the battery life if you did not use it.

There are a lot of buttons on this camera, and that is one of the reasons it can take a while to learn to use. You have a dial that will allow you to put your computer into the various shooting modes, a button to control the menu, a button for macro modes, a button to turn the display on and off, etc. There are 10 buttons to this camera, not counting the shutter button, dial, or the cursor touchpad. Fortunately, you don't need to learn all the buttons to be able to use the camera. When I hand this camera to my husband, I usually just put it on auto so he doesn’t have to worry about all of them.

The camera can be operated when it is plugged in, or you can just plug it in to charge. It uses a USB cable to plug into the computer, or you can purchase a card reader to transfer pictures to the computer. These two inputs are normally covered so they are not exposed to the elements.

The software that came with the camera is not really that great, I couldn't get it to work very well. The exception would be Photoshop 5.0. I use Photoshop 7 right now, so I didn't install it myself, but I have used Photoshop 5 in the past and it is a good program. It is also not the easiest program to learn all the features of, so be prepared for a learning curve.

The camera feels very sturdy, and is not the lightest in the world. It is also not the smallest camera in the world, and is slightly larger than my old camera. When I bring my camera out, I usually wear it around my neck... be careful though, because if you do not attach the neck strap well enough, it could fly off. The door to the Compactflash card is strong and closes securely.

You can take pictures fairly quickly but not as fast as you could with a regular, non-digital, camera. The speed is a vast improvement over my older digital camera, and I usually do not have problems with the speed. The only time that speed has ever been a concern is when I'm trying to take the perfect picture of my daughter and she is moving quickly.

I don’t recommend using the 32MB card that comes with this camera exclusively. You’ll be changing out cards all the time. I use a 512MB card, and it allows me to take over 275 pictures at the highest JPEG quality available. When I take it on long vacations, that is still not enough, but it is enough to last me for about a week. It may last longer or less for you though.

Downsides to the camera

There aren’t many. The optical viewfinder is probably the biggest downside. It’s blurry and doesn’t really show all of your changes... and there's a parallax problem you may have to deal with it if you use it. I use the screen almost exclusively for that reason, but that is not much of a downside, because the battery life on this camera is great.

The speed is not good enough for fast sports pictures, but this is not much of a downside for me either.

Overall Impressions

I love this camera. After six months of use and thousands of pictures taken, this is still my dream camera. I would recommend this camera (or its newer siblings, the G3 or G5) to anybody.