- Joined
- Jan 1, 2005
- Messages
- 4,465
- Reaction score
- 1,222
- Location
- Buda, TX
- First Name
- Rich
- Last Name
- Gibbens
Canon recently released the G11, an upgrade to its G series camera. For those not familiar with the G series, it is Canon's high end, flagship compact camera designed for advanced amateurs. The series has been quite successful for Canon and is often the compact choice for professional photographers when they don't want to carry a dslr.
I haven't had a compact camera for 1.5 years (the wife got mine when I got a dslr). I've been carrying the dslr on the bike, but I worry that dual sporting will result in its premature death. So after reading all the great reviews I picked up a Canon G11 about a month ago to use during my riding adventures. This past week I finally gave it an extended test during three days of riding in the Lincoln National Forest around Cloudcroft, NM.
Here are some of the shots I got. Even though the G11 can shoot RAW, I took all these as JPGs with a little post processing in Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.
Shot using manual settings and a 15 second exposure.
Same settings, without the light show
It has a pretty good dynamic range. I don't think it has as much as a dslr, but it's still good, IMO.
Canon actually lowered the megapixels from 14.7 in the G10 to 10.0 with the G11. They did this to reduce noise and by all accounts this has been a good move. This shot was heavily cropped and is still very clean. The bright light helped keep the ISO down (shot at 80), but still an impressive performance IMO.
The auto white balance worked well. Snow in the sunshine came out as white, not grey.
The in-camera JPG processing is quite nice. I tweaked the exposure of this pic to get more of the mountains, but the shots right out of the camera were all easily usable.
The blues of early evening mixed with a full moon
Though the sensor is larger than a typical compact camera, the depth of field is still quite large. It's f/2.8 wide open but don't buy this camera thinking you will get a limited depth of field like you would with a f/2.8 lens on a dslr. The sensor is still too small for narrow depth of field work.
The G11 is too large to fit into a shirt pocket, but it does fit in the breast pocket of my riding jacket, making it easy to carry with me while riding.
In summary, my initial test of the G11 shows it to meet my needs as my camera of choice while dual sport riding. While I prefer the dslr, for those times and occasions when I don't want to carry the dslr, the G11 seems like it will get the job done very well indeed.
If you would care to see more pics with the G11, here's the link to all 101 pics from the New Mexico recon.
Last edited: