Canon G10 bypassed
So following up my last post, I also played with a Canon G10 in Japan last week. My impressions were that it is a solid little brick of a camera. You could probably pound a nail in with it and then go on shooting.
I liked the dedicated manual exposure compensation wheel, because I’m always adjusting that. The manual ISO wheel was also nice, although I tend not to adjust ISO as frequently.
Overall though, I felt that I needed more of a different camera than just another high quality small sensor compact. Had my Ricoh given out completely, I might have been tempted to pick up the G10 as a replacement. But I’m looking now for a larger sensor. It’ll be interesting to see where Canon goes with this line now–my guess is they will go with a small CMOS sensor in the G11. They’ll probably end up making a large sensor compact, but only after they see the market potential for it. They are too afraid of cutting into DSLR sales. Pity, that.
I think before Canon puts out a large sensor point & shoot, Panasonic might produce faster lens(es), and/or Olympus would have a working micro 4/3d camera. In the meantime, fate of Pentax might be determined.