Compact Cameras

Dear J-

Quickly: work reminds me of my least favorite people in the world: Ducks fans. Ohoho. Lemieux and Gretzky are the only other hockey players you’ve ever heard of, and asked to recite the career highlights of, say, a Rob Niedermayer, you’ll inevitably focus on that Cup he just won. Damnit, so envious!

I read a glowing, enthusiastic review for the Canon G7/G9 twins over at luminous-landscape; the author touts the response and handling. He clearly subscribes to the “best camera in the world is one that never leaves your hand” philosophy that I’ve talked about before. I like to read reviews of tools used in unusual ways, as it gives me ideas of what to whine about er lust after uh, consider for later (this is how I ended up with a DMC-LC1 long after it became “obsolete” — it’s likely to be my last compact digicam, but more on that later).

First, the handling: with a lens filter adapter attached and a compact grip, huh, well, it sounds like it’s about the same size (but not weight) as something, like, say, the LC1. The M8 ends up sitting in a shoulder bag or in the hotel room because it’s just a bit too bulky — ditto the LC1, which is solid and a nice size, but not really a hand camera. Call it a shoulder camera. So weight and bulk clearly matter; the G7/G9 weigh in at 385 grams, whereas the LC1 is nearly double the weight (705 grams).

He also ends up using the touted features: optical image stabilization and automatic ISO (with attendant noise reduction processing). But here Canon’s got a pretty decent trick up its sleeve; although the G7 and G9 end up using a compact CCD in lieu of the creamy-smooth CMOS imagers of the dSLRs, they’ve got a fair handle on noise reduction algorithms, and the results are not terrible. Plus the noise reduction on the G-series is relatively light — not quite Ricoh-light, but lighter than, say, Panasonic’s often ham-fisted attempts — so detail shows up and noise comes across as grain, not pointillistic blotches. Here’s where the LC1 excels; sure, you can crank it up to ISO 400 and be horrified by the noise, or you can choose it as a deliberate effect. Me, I like the way the LC1 makes noise; it’s grainy, but it reminds me of Tri-X Pan, which I’ve always loved. Not all’s perfect there, though, as the LC1 has a tendency to exhibit banding along with the noise.

Image stabilization is pretty important, too; as an available-light camera with a relatively slow lens, auto ISO and stabilization allow for great flexibility in snapping pictures. Couple that with some well thought-out controls and it sounds like I have a winner to replace the DSC-V1 as my carry-camera (eventually).

But … and you know, this is why those 8MP bridge cameras of yesteryear disappeared so fast — Minolta A2, Sony DSC-F828, Canon Pro1, Nikon 8700 — at a list price of $400+, the high-end point-and-shoot quickly runs into the low-end dSLRs. It’s a bloody scrap, but something like the G7/G9, although still compact, weighs a bare 50 grams less than something like the Olympus E-410. And you can rag on the E-410 for having poor dSLR photo quality, but you can’t argue sensor physics: bigger area = more sensitive.

Granted, that 435g for the E-410 comes at the expense of not being listed with a lens, and the body itself is significantly bulkier (626 cc) than the G7/G9 (328 cc), but fit it with something like the 35 f/3.5 macro or, better yet, an affordable used Nikon Series E lens, and it becomes far more compelling. Plus it’s really not much more than the G7/G9, and you gain all that extra depth of field control …

Mike