So last wednesday I headed out for my first backcountry ski tour of the season. I was planning an 8 mile tour with about 1000 feet of climbing, so I dispensed with my 30D and 24-70 L lens. Instead, I packed my cute little compact G9 digicam. It was light and easy.
I headed out and began taking pictures after about 30 minutes of climbing. I might have started taking pics more because I was tired and less because there was anything inspiring. But, the first major snow of a season is always pretty inspiring, and as I spent more time and gained more elevation, I found myself stopping frequently to whip-out my easy little camera. By the time I reached the top of the mountain, I had taken hundreds of shots. I was having a lot of fun with the little camera.
When I got home, I downloaded the images and started parsing through them. The problem started when I realized that I shot mostly jpeg instead of raw. Typically, I shoot raw with this little camera, but because of the day's bright snowy conditions, I decided to shoot aperture priority. I didn't realize that you had to set the file output type for every mode. Oops.
So I start working on the images...stitching panoramas. I was exceedingly unhappy with the images. Between flaky white balance and poor dynamic range in the brightly lit snowy conditions, I was really irritated. I know I can deal with the white balance by shooting raw the next time, but the lack of dynamic range really annoyed me. I also found that the sharpness and detail was far inferior to my 30D. It isn't a subtle difference to me. I was really disappointed.
I guess I have become spoiled. Before I had the 30D, I used a Pro-1 and was pretty satisfied with the image quality out of it. I am not sure if I can ever really go back. The sharpness, color and dynamic range of the DSLR has ruined me forever. I will certainly take the G9 out when I really need to go light, but I will never have the expectation of getting many truly great shots with it.
