Canon PowerShot G5 > Reviews > Probably the best camera of 2003

Author's product rating:   

Picture Quality	Excellent
Range & Quality of Features	Excellent
Ease of Use	Easy
Overall Look & Design	Good
Value for Money	Good

Advantages:	Excellent photo quality for a prosumer camera
Disadvantages:	Quite hard to use for a techno - phobe

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I am not new to digital photography and have worked with various cameras (other Canon, Agfa, some Sonys and some amateur cameras: BenQ, Aiptek). The Powershot G5 was chosen after thoroughly searching the Internet for professional reviews and also taking into account other people's opinion about it. Everybody praised it. Even the seller recommended it, though it was cheaper than the 5 MP Sony and Minolta by more than 100$.

So, how is the real thing? First of all, it has that exceptional photo quality that Canon has put into its photo cameras until now. I have recently compared the photo quality to the Nikon D70 SLR. The professional tests showed little difference. On the other side, the Canon SLRs provided obviously a better quality of the image. For the seekers of good and affordable digital cameras, you could also check out the Canon 300D SLR (or Digital Rebel). It is around 700$ and provides a better quality of the image than the G5.

Another thing: some of the photos made by the G5 were used in a photographer's album on A3 format and they look great, even better than the ones made with an optical Canon.

The G5 offers a great diversity of options, the best I've seen in a digital camera. The most appealing is the manual focusing system (allows you to choose the area of the picture where to focus). Other function, which I consider interesting (though by far not as useful as the manual focus) is the ND filter that allows you to shoot pictures in very powerful light (for example, you can take a picture of the sun if you want to, and it will still look ok). You will also find virtually any option you can dream of related to flash, white point (but no temperature white point though), colour and sharpness settings (vivid, sharp, sepia, b/w etc).
Probably the most useful is vivid. I use it very often and the photos of nature are usually very good in this mode.

Another thing: I have obtained some excellent night shots with this camera, though ISO 400 proved too noisy for me. But you do have the possibility to choose from ISO 50, 100, 200 and 400. If you have a tripod, you can do wonders with this camera. Noise is low for ISO 50 and 100 and acceptable for ISO 200 in night shots.

Battery life is excellent. I have actually never been "out of juice" in the field with this camera, so I can't really say how many photos it can take. A minimum is 150, with flash in 25%, and with the LCD on, also used to share photos with friends.

Problems: my father also uses the G5 and still didn't get used to a great deal of its functions until now, though the "Automatic" and "Program" camera programs provided some excellent photos. On the other side, my father is a techno-phobe. I did not have any problems in learning the camera, and the manual is very well-made, helpful and in printed form. Also, most of the options can be very easily learn without the manual.

If it was something to complain about, it would be the purple fringing, which is more than normal, but it didn't annoy me too much.

I found it strange and sometimes annoying that if you zoom, the barrel covers a part of the image you see through the viewfinder.

Overall, if you want a very good and relatively cheap prosumer camera with exceptional photo quality, the G5 is definitely a choice to take into consideration.

I still recommend checking out the Internet reviews made by professional testers for some technical details (including photo tests and design features) in order to see what is the camera that best suits you.