The G10 Winter Test

The dampness of last week's International Meet wasn't much cop for climbing but one thing it was good for was the "Soggyness test". Several days immersion in full Scottish spring conditions saw the G10 eventually spend an evening on strike refusing to work and asking for a new battery. Luckily normal service was resumed the following day although the screen is still recovering looking a little more like a lava lamp with a few floating bubbles. I'd say that was a pretty reasonable effort by the G10 considering I wasn't using a case and it ended up in a puddle in my rucksack lid pocket, Ive had an F90 die after a similar dousing. 7/10 The other big test for the G10 this winter was during my ascent of Ravens Edge in December when the final pitch tested how robust the body was. Grating my way up a squeeze chimney I remember getting to an impasse where I thought my rack was jamming my progress. It turned out to be my G10 once more without its case wedged in my chest pocket. The Gore Tex got shredded but the G10 escaped with minor scrapes on the metal work. 8/10

The biggest benefit of the G10 as a winter camera so far has been the chunky dials on top, which enable me to turn on, change operating mode, ISO and exposure compensation wearing big belay mitts. 9/10

Canon G10 first impressions

Just picked up a Canon G10, their new top end compact digital camera, so here are a few initial impressions after 30 minutes use this afternoon. It's on the large side for a compact (but for those of us used to 35mm film compacts it feels the right size for a quality compact camera). The controls on the whole are by large buttons and chunky dials - one of the main reasons I choose the G10 over rivals, as I'm hoping this should ease use with big gloves. The screen is BIG, bright and has great colours (more saturated than on my Vaio computer screen). Speed of use with Jpegs is pretty fast, with RAW not bad - certainly better than many other compacts. Here's a few pics, the first showing the colours This second is shot at ISO 100

....and here's a crop to show detail (no sharpening done in photoshop)

This fourth shot is at ISO 800 1/60th second (it was getting dark)

...again a detail showing obvious noise but not bad.

All these were shot on Large Jpeg, the G10 of course shoots RAW, which should have better results. I'll post up more images and thoughts once I've had a bit more chance to play.