Follow-Up to My Previous PostWell I have picked up a G7 and spent some time with it yesterday afternoon. My reaction, in a single phrase, is
it's a superb camera that performs beyond its class.
I'll not spend time reciting the camera's details, as Michael's already provided the salient information is his commentary. But I will note some attributes that stood out to me in my first few hours with the G7.
- The camera has a very sturdy feeling and nice heft. It does not feel like a circuit board wrapped in sheet metal.
- The G7's size enables it to be carried easily in a jacket pocket.
- The supplied neck strap is not useful. I replaced it with the nice, cinch-able wrist strap from my S70.
- Shutter lag and focus time were not significant issues. There was also no lag in writing images to a SanDisk Extreme III SD card. The camera was ready to shoot again immediately.
- The G7's lens is, indeed, extremely sharp. Further, I was unable to induce any noticeable color fringing at thee edges of its widest setting.
- The lcd screen seem clearer and brighter than that of my 5D.
- The optical viewfinder is nice to have but, as it displays no information, it's of limited use.
- The image stabilizer is very effective. It is, however, a bit of an extra drain on the battery. I recommend setting its activation to "On Shoot", rather than the default "Continuous", to save power.
The G7 is the finest digital camera of its class that I've ever owned or used. Its performance is at least 2x that of my S70. The absence of a RAW recording mode, something I lamented in Canon's new upper-end p&s cameras, is just not going to be an issue for me. Again, Lightroom's fine Develop module greatly mitigates this deficit for this camera.
I have posted a handful of images I shot near my home during my first few hours with the G7. These images are presented with absolutely no post-processing. They came into Lightroom and were directly exported at an appropriate size for posting. These low-res images don't really do justice to the images.
Guffaw of the day: I had not even unpacked the camera's manual before I shot these images. Hence I did not realize that I had not even been using the camera's highest resolution.
Honestly, this G7 is making me wonder if I really need a Purple People Eater (M8) even after Leica fixes the early bugs. It's at least taken the hunger pangs away.
The sample images are here.