Product Reviews

The digital camera world is no respecter of heritage; as soon as technology overhauls an old model, it's stripped from the market. The PowerShot G series has managed to buck the trend a little though, as each new model is an evolution of the old rather than a merciless reinvention.

Following on from the PowerShot G5 (see issue 109, p78) the key change to the latest G series model is its CCD resolution. The inexorable rise of pixel ratings gives the new model 7.1 megapixels, up from the five of the G5. Backing up those seven million pixels is an impressively fast f/2.0 lens, making for sharp shots in low light even with the ISO sensitivity setting relatively low. Its 35mm equivalent zoom range is a moderate wide-angle 35mm to telephoto 140mm - not in the same league as the likes of the Kodak DX7590's 10x zoom (see p72) - but higher zoom levels generally equate to softer images and problems with vignetting, geometric distortions and lens flare.

A quality rangefinder compact should have some heft to it, but the G6 feels just a little on the light side despite its 480g. Of more concern is the feel. Although there's plenty of magnesium alloy in the chassis, there's plastic cladding on most of the parts you actually touch; it doesn't have the air of a £500 camera.

While it might not be oozing chic in the way Canon's IXUS models do, when it comes to taking pictures the G6 has it where it counts. It eschews the raft of preset scene modes creeping onto consumer-level cameras, with the exception of landscape, portrait, night-time fill-in and panorama stitch-assist modes. The latter is comprehensive; you can select left-to-right, right-to-left, up, down or four-shot tile. In each stitch mode the camera displays a small preview of the last shot and the view through the lens in the appropriate position, allowing you to marry up the two for the best results.

But the main focus of the G6 is semi-automatic or manual control. The top-mounted LCD is very much akin to that sported by Canon's digital SLRs, and allows you to see and change nearly every photo setting without resorting to the flip-out 2in colour monitor. The rotary mode selector sports aperture-

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and shutter-priority, fully manual and program modes. The selector also has two custom settings modes, C1 and C2; changes made to any setting in these modes are remembered so you can flip back to them if you use a certain combination on a regular basis. We found ourselves using it for macro opportunities, dropping the camera into macro-on, aperture-priority f/2.0, flash-off, spot exposure, ISO50 RAW mode with a simple turn of the selector.

There are several more features on the G6 that you'd never find on a consumer-level digital model. It has a neutral density filter for situations when there's too much light, such as bright conditions where you nonetheless need a large aperture to reduce depth of field. And this is no electronic trick, it's a real, optical filter - select ND Filter in the Record menu and you can see and hear it flip across the light path. Manual focus mode offers focus bracketing, and flash modes offer first- or second-curtain flash sync, in other words the flash can be set to fire when the shutter opens or when it closes. This is good for taking night shots of things like cars, to prevent the light trail preceding the main subject.

Battery life from the lithium-ion pack is remarkable: it lasted for more than a week of testing - and several hundred shots - on one charge. Canon claims 900 shots without the monitor, 300 shots with, and 400 minutes' playback time. If anything, we'd say that was slightly conservative.

Startup time is a potential sticking point though; compared to the lightning-fast lens extension of Sony's DSC-W1 (see issue 121, p70), the G6 is relatively pedestrian with a ready-to-shoot time including lens extension of about 2.8 seconds. And it certainly doesn't have the instant response of its SLR relative the EOS 300D (see issue 111, p74) when it comes to pressing the shutter; a delay of about half a second is the norm.

The end results are certainly worth the wait though. All of our test shots were devoid of chromatic aberrations, and resolution was superb. By default, images are slightly soft, which is all the better for judicious tweaking of Photoshop's Unsharp Mask to properly bring out detail. Its only Achilles heel is very slightly higher noise levels than we'd like; ISO100 is definitely the preferred setting if you're sensitive to this.

Canon does seem in danger of painting itself into a corner, with the lesser models squeezing from the bottom end in terms of quality and features, and the 300D shouting from the wings that it costs only £200 more. But if you want good old-fashioned rangefinder-style manual control coupled with very high-resolution images and almost unparalleled advanced features, the PowerShot G6 will deliver. Just don't expect the build quality of a Leica.