Canon PowerShot G7 Digital Camera Review

I've been looking for the perfect compact camera, one that is small enough to easily carry but powerful enough to take excellent pictures. So far, the Canon PowerShot G7 comes close... very very close.

 Bottom line: It's a buy, even if it is expensive. However, there is still room for improvement.

 What It Is

The Canon PowerShot G7 is a compact digital camera with 10 megapixels of resolution. It has a 6x optical zoom lens and a 2.5-inch LCD screen that can be used as a viewfinder or to review shots. The G7 is a little big for a compact camera and it strains the upper limit of the "compact camera" category. It will fit in a jacket pocket but will not go in a pants pocket. It is hefty but it's a solid-feeling heft that gives the impression of high quality.

The G7 takes a proprietary battery that is not cheap -- I bought a spare battery for $51. The basic camera comes with a battery, charger, neck strap and a skimpy 32 MB SD card for picture storage. I found the neck strap to be too bulky and I swapped it for a wrist strap.

Taking Pictures

With a 6x optical zoom, the G7 gives me a lot of flexibility about taking pictures. Generally, zooming all the way in gets me about as close as I can expect. However, I wish the lens was wider at the wide end. With the optical stabilization (anti-shake) turned on, the camera really allows me to zoom all the way in and take clear pictures. I have a Canon PowerShot A700 that does not have optical stabilization and it is always fuzzy at maximum zoom. The G7 is much better in this regard.

In general, photos come out well focused and crisp. With 10 megapixels to work with, I can crop images substantially and still end up with a picture suitable for publishing. Unlike my other cameras, the flash on the G7 tends to not blow out flesh tones, so there's less of that annoying glare on faces. The camera's red-eye setting is not very effective, however.

One of my favorite features on this camera is the knob for setting the camera's ISO or sensitivity. This knob does not function in the camera's "Auto" mode, but it works in all other settings. At 80 or 100 ISO, the camera is both reasonably sensitive and has low noise. I recently shot hundreds of pictures at ISO 100 and was very pleased with the exposure and low noise in the images.

With 10-megapixel images, pictures from the G7 consume a lot of space. A 1 GB SD chip stores about 235 pictures at the camera's highest setting, which is fine for my needs. Each image is around 3-4 MB, depending on the content.

Getting to some selections in the camera's menus takes a certain amount of digging. One example is the "Format" command to clean the memory chip. I use this regularly and it's annoying that I have to scroll WAY down the screen to find it. It's not a biggie, however. Another negative is that images have some purple fringing in high-contrast situations. Again, it's not huge but it's there.

At the top of this review is a picture that I took with the Canon G7 at a trade show a few days ago. I was standing about 10 feet away with the flash on and the camera set for 100 ISO, and the picture came out pretty well.

Summary

I just paid $550 for my Canon G7, so I'm inclined to like it. However, there is no doubt that it makes better pictures than my old Canon A700. What would make it perfect? I'd like to see AA batteries (instead of proprietary), a couple ounces less weight, less purple fringing and a wider wide-angle range on the lens. The G7 is a pretty darn capable compact camera though, and I recommend it.