Comment of Canon G9

Blogger was having problems yesterday and this message from Lifespy seemed to get caught up in it. It appears on some pages, but not on others. So I have posted it here.

The answer to Lifespy is that no, I haven't tried this technique, but I will. I normally pre-focus by half pressing the shutter button in order to speed things up. By the way, his blog is definitely worth looking at and I will place a permanent link to it asap.
Thanks Lifespy.

Hi Philip,
Have you tried using the canon g9 in "snap shooting" mode using hyperfocal distance settings and then saving them to C1 or C2 (like using a rangefinder in street photography). I would be interested in your comments on this. I dd an article on it with how to set it up here: http://lifespy.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/setting-up-snap-shooting-mode-on-the-g9/
I'll be back to read more and I have add you to my blog roll :)

Canon G9 and Olympus XA

My criticism of the Canon G9’s poor optical viewfinder prompted happy recollections of one of my old cameras from the late 1970s. I still have it – a tiny Olympus XA. What a joy that little camera was to use. Without its detachable A11 flash, it fits beautifully into the palm of my hand – and it’s viewfinder, well… bright, wide and clear. This Olympus was revolutionary in its time. It has Aperture Priority only, with the shutter speed the camera selected displayed in the viewfinder by a lovely big analogue pointer.

Of course, unlike the modern digital compacts, you are able to stop the f2.8 lens right down to f22 if you wish. However, the fastest shutter speed was 1/500sec.

None of your fancy auto focus, either. Split-image focusing is by a silken-smooth sliding tab or knurled ring beneath the lens. Long before ‘ergonomics’ was a selling point, the focusing lever fell perfectly to hand. The slide-to-close casing was all but bullet-proof and the optics were wonderfully sharp. Oh, and the shutter was fired by a feather-light touch.

That little camera travelled countless thousands of miles in my pocket and it produced thousands of pictures that were published in newspapers and magazines all over the world. But one of my favourites was taken much closer to home. In Blackpool, Lancashire here in UK. This shot appeared in my first book way back in 1986. The original negative has had a pretty hard time over the years and the scan needs a lot of cleaning up now – so don’t look too closely - it is, though, needle sharp.

Know I know I’m getting all nostagic, but I reckon if Canon really want to produce a compact camera that is useable for street photography – they should take a very close look at that old Olympus XA – in particlular they should put their eyes – and I don’t mean the blind ones – to that wonderful optical viewfinder.

There is a fascinating original review of the Olympus XA here… Canon people please take a look.

http://www.urban75.org/photos/olympus-xa.html

Pictures show the Olympus XA with and without its detachable A11 flash gun

And in case you are wondering, no, I do not want to go back to the days of film - I love digital and all it can do... but I would like a small compact digital camera that I can put to my eye and see through properly. I want to be able to see what's going on through there, compose a photograph and time the action perfectly. Is that a lot to ask?

Canon G9 - shutter lag

Thanks to Backlitcoyote (what a wonderful name) for the comment about the Canon G9. My initial disappointment with the camera centres around those two things – shutter lag and a lousy optical viewfinder.

That optical viewfinder is all but useless and I can’t imagine that it is beyond the resources of Canon to do a better job. Maybe if they concentrated more on how the camera actually handles in the real world – in a photographer’s hands – they would come up with something more useable.

When Backlitcoyote says it takes from 1/3 to ½ second from pressing the shutter button to the camera actually taking the photograph, is this, I wonder, even when the shutter button is already half-pressed to allow auto-focusing?

As I have said, I will put the camera to a proper test in real, practical situations as soon as I can. Meanwhile, I have to agree that the quality of the images taken on this Canon G9 is good. Maybe I just need to get used to it – but frankly, any camera that waits for half a second to take the picture just might get sent back for a refund or thrown at the wall. What possible use is a camera like this when photographing people?

I have posted my first couple of shots taken on this G9 – as you can see, nothing was moving and I used the LCD on the back of the camera to compose the pictures. The quality is fine. The photograph of the boat was done with very low side light in late afternoon, and this low light does tend to add a great deal to the crisp effect – the high resolution image is immaculate. The sky has burnt out on the left hand side, but, this can be expected with this type of shot where the foreground is so dark and the sky so bright. There are lots of ways around this, by the way, and I'll show you some in future posts.

The picture of the rock is a very simple test close-up. I did not use the macro function, just pointed and pressed. Yes, I’m impressed by the quality, but right now that camera is on borrowed time.

Photography weekend in Scotland

We’ve just said farewell to another group of photographers who have been with us for the weekend here in SW Scotland. I think I can safely say that the weekend was a success. We all had a lot of fun, in fact my sides are still aching from all the laughter. Norene and I really enjoy doing these photography weekends, and we always seem to make a whole bunch of new friends. That’s me with the daft hat and red jacket with some of the photographers.

Hundreds of photographs were taken over the last couple of days, and an awful lot of them were done for the first time using the Manual (M) mode. I do like to help and encourage my students to understand and use the M mode, but I always stress that they should not be a slave to it – it’s the photograph that matters, not how the camera captured it.

I get very little time to take photographs when I am coaching others, especially a group, so I didn’t get much chance to try out my new Canon G9. My first impressions are not very favourable – do I detect a considerable shutter lag? I’ll let you know more about this very soon when I have had chance to give the camera a thorough test when I am out taking photographs. Meanwhile if anyone has any experience of this little camera, please do post a comment and let me know what you think. I am already doubtful.