Canon PowerShot G12 user reviews

Pros Love the picture quality especially in low light. Like the fact that there's still a viewfinder because when it disappears I'll be forced to lug an SLR around and that be a chore I'd prefer to avoid.

Cons It's slightly larger than my old Canon S70 so it's not as easy to stuff in a pocket. Won't fit in pants pocket but will fit in jacket pockets.

Summary Have used the camera for numerous indoor construction pics with out the flash and the results are excellent. Haven't used the camera outdoors much due to lousy weather in the NYC area this year. Battery life is more than adequate for me but I rarely take more than 200 pics per day. Use 4 gig 30MB/S Extreme chips and the download speed is fabulous. Picture to picture speed is more than fast enough fo my use as I rarely take pics in rapid succession. Power up speed is fine too. There's a slight delay when zooming but hasn't spoiled any opportunities yet. Love the function dials as it reduces the need to scroll thru menu's. The menus are very similar to the old S70 so my learning curve has been short. Used a friends Nikon and the different menu organization made using it very difficult. I'd need to spend lots of time in the manual to learn their organization.

Also looked at the S95 but lack of a viewfinder was a turn off for me.

Pros solid build decent image quality and movable LCD and RAW as well as a sort of viewfinder, crude but sufficient in bright light conditionis

Cons noisy above ISO 200 ..small sensor issues of course. The control wheel at back with its buttons is too easy to set manual focus and so forth

Summary The small sensor does as well as one can do with that but the camera is not a small camera so there are larger sensor cameras out there that puts this old design in the shade. The Sony being the one that I most favour and if it had a better direct menu system I would have gotten that. Instead I will buy neither and wait for a new Sony or for Canon to modernize the compact designs that need a serious updating. I will not be surprised that they will suddently do just that.

Pros Takes good photos before lens scratched.

Cons Lens scratches when opening and closing. Appears to be a somewhat common problem.

Summary Caution!

Pros Build quality, feel in the hand.
Top Dials.
A lot in a compact camera.
Optical viewfinder.(See Cons.)
Swivel LCD.
Very good in low light.
Good flash performance.

Cons Viewfinder does not zoom with same parallax as lens.
Viewfinder does not refocus when zooming in video.
No information in viewfinder.
HDR functionality.
Shutter lag.

Summary I wanted to love this camera, and I did love it when I got it. But only until I started using it. What I think are flaws may not be everyone's idea of flaws. But the cons listed above are serious for me. The viewfinder might as well be a hole in the camera for all it does. If you rely only on the optical viewfinder when zooming, it's likely you'll get badly off-centered pictures. And why it doesn't refocus when you zoom is a mystery. My cheap Kodak can do that!

When my iPhone can do HDR exposures with one click, why does this camera need three separate exposures and a tripod? Makes HDR useless unless you're being very very serious about a particular shot and have lots of time.

The little wheels in the back are fine for small fingers. I constantly push them accidentally. They aren't designed for quick changes, and have no tactile indicators to distinguish them by feel.

The settings are very confusing to me, and the menus don't seem intuitively organized. I sometimes get settings I don't want then don't know how to get out of them. For example, somehow the 10x setting for video was turned on and I ruined several important videos without knowing it.

Some of my pictures are labeled "unidentifiable image!" What...? Others come out as half frame with the other half grey.

There must be a technological reason why there has to be shutter lag but I think that a camera of this quality shouldn't have any. It's very annoying and makes action shots a guessing game or results in blurred pics.

There are more things I don't like but those are the highlights. For the high spots you can read others' reviews. I wish I could love it like they do. I bought this camera because I wanted something small to travel with but not give up picture quality. Now I'm thinking it's worth lugging the Nikon DSLR around.

Also, I see that of this date, CNet says this is selling, low price, for $699. Ha! You can have mine, little used, unblemished, for $500 with the case! (It's a very nice case.) If I could do it over, I wouldn't buy this. I do so much research on the things I buy I'm rarely disappointed, so this is very unusual for me. Read these reviews and make your decision according to what's important in a camera to you.