Canon G9

Just few hours that I am playing with it, but it looks great so far.

My first digital camera was a faithful A80, also from Canon. I really love its swivel LCD screen, which allows to shoot 'as if it were a poor man's Hasselbladt', yet, there was some emotion on shooting a photo on my old 35mm SLR Nikon that the digital one didnt have.

So, I recently decided to do an upgrade, and needed to decide between buying an SLR with changeable lenses, or getting some type of compact.

I like Nikon, and I have a few lenses because of my older body, but, their pro-sumer model (D80) uses a sensor (DX format) smaller than a standard 35mm negative. I would prefer to wait until they launch an updated version. Any investment made on new DX format lenses would not work well on updated full sized bodies.

Since I decided to wait before buying an SLR, and I have always thought of having two cameras (a compact and an SLR), based on my good experience with the A80, I did some research on Canon sub-compacts: SD 870, SD 850, and even SD 600. It seems that the addition of more megapixels has not been helpful for these cameras. Its a pity that the SD700 is not produced anymore, since its image is very clear (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canonsd700is/). I also was not very convinced on their autofocus abilities, and lack of aperture or speed priority control.

A camera that consistently gathered great comments was the G9. It allows to focus manually without navigating through 4 menus (as in the A80 case), and provides fully manual controls much as an SLR does. I went to Circuit City to 'feel' it, and I was very surprised, it is physically solid, takes great pictures, much much faster than my A80 did. This got me convinced that an upgrade was due. The camera is compact but not shirt pocket material, it fits nicely in my jacket pocket, tough.

I bought the camera at Circuit City through the web, with an Extreme III 2Gb, and selected pickup in the store. I ended up paying $414 for the camera alone plus $45 for the card, plus tax.

After a few hours using the G9, I am not 100% sure I will eventuall upgrade to a full SLR. The camera feels solid, the photos I have taken so far (without reading the user manual) came out pretty well. Lets see when Nikon announces the D80X or D90 (http://yourphotoarchive.com/laugh.htm)