The PowerShot G9 is what the industry likes to call a 'bridge' camera. It's designed to sit in the gap between compact and DSLR and as such should do well in this labs. The G9 is a compact digital camera on steroids. As well as a 12.1-megapixel sensor you have full manual control and a 35-210mm zoom lens. Combine this with a 3in LCD screen and a flash shoe capable of handling Canon Speedlite flashguns and you can tell that on paper at least the G9 is a camera built for the enthusiast.
The body of the camera is hugely impressive and this device feels like a truly well constructed piece of kit. The dials and buttons might put off the
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beginner but the learning curve isn't that steep. As with the Eos 400D, the menus are simple to use and getting to those hidden features takes little effort. We did find the control dial on the rear of the PowerShot a bit small but that's about all we didn't like on this excellently designed camera.
Initially the G9 blew our tests out of the water with exceptional reproduction of colours and balanced exposures. The G9 came high up the list in our colour accuracy test and produced one of the best skin tone shots in this labs. It isn't all good news for Canon though. The G9 didn't capture the fine details as well as we'd have liked and when examined close-up the images lacked crispness. We were a little concerned by the noise in our images as well, but this was a minor fault.
The G9 promises much and nearly delvers on all counts. The fine detail in images and a bit of noise are the camera's main failings. In comparison to its sibling the Eos 400D, the G9 manages to outperform the DSLR with colour reproduction and exposure balance but fails to get enough detail to compete. The G9 is a great camera to use and it does produce high quality images but be prepared for some fuzziness if you get too close to the results.
