What is it?
The Canon PowerShot G16 is Canon’s top of the line compact camera. It’s what you use when you don’t fancy taking your DSLR out for a spin
What’ great?
What’s not? Lovely stills, great video, fun to use and very fully featured indeed.
What’s not?
The Wi-Fi system could be better, it could have a toushcreen and it could be cheaper but, frankly, we’re clutching at straws.
The bottom line:
One of the most truly powerful compact cameras we’ve even seen and it still manages to maintain a sense of fun and universal usability. Where’s yours?
Canon
Canon PowerShot G16: Review
Canon’s G-series is the king of the PowerShot range. Each year, the number next to that big letter goes up and each time what we get is pretty much the very best compact camera that money can buy. They’re not designed for everyone. Both the price and feature set are a reflection of that. Not everyone wants to spend over £500 on something that’s not stacked with beauty modes with which to create the ultimate selfie and there are plenty out there who would prefer to pick up a low-end DSLR or CSC camera for that kind of outlay.
Instead, the G16 and its predecessors are aimed at the enthusiast or professional who’d prefer a day off from their hefty big lens-changing cameras in exchange for something that you can throw in a bag, fit in your pocket and operate with one hand if you fancy.
This latest version adds Wi-Fi, high speed focus, high speed shooting and, of course, the same top end image processing power a you’ll find in the EOS DSLR machines. Did we enjoy using it? Will you? Here’s what we think.
Canon PowerShot G16: Body build
There’s little in the way of change to the build of the Canon G16. It’s already good looking, if utilitarian, in its black box camera style. It’s probably a little too large to be comfortably pocketable in your trousers given its 4cm thick profile but you can still fit it in there if you don’t mind the bulge. It’s also a touch on the dense side at 355g but nothing you can’t handle. Ultimately, it’s quite big for a little camera but definitely compact given the power that lurks within.
As for the knobs and buttons, there’s certainly plenty of them. On the rear, it’s a pretty standard affair alongside the 3-inch LCD screen. There’s the normal wheel with flash and macro options, and four buttons to take you through the menus, change ISO and one for a shortcut to shooting fundamentals like shutter speed and aperture.
On the top side, there’s the dial-on-dial design that we’ve grown to enjoy on the G-series. The first is the main control dial and the second is the very handy exposure control wheel which is a real boon when fighting to capture against backlighting, shiny objects and very dark ones too. As a nice extra, there’s also a small selector on the front which is easy to forget about but very nice for zipping through the settings in just about menu in which you find yourself.
The only other feature of major note – aside the front and back leather grips and general tidiness of the design – is the small optical viewfinder for those who like to frame up their shots in the old school style. As with most seen on compacts theses days, it’s really too small to be of much use. What’s more, it only covers 80 per cent of what actually comes out in the photograph, so it’s not really worth it anyway.
All in, though, we really couldn’t or wouldn’t fault anything with the build of this machine. It oozes class, feel utterly solid and is dependable to every turn and click. If it were a buddy, you could trust it with your life.
Dan Sung
Canon PowerShot G16: Usability
This compact could be a total mishmash of icons and menu confusion and its quite the testament to Canon that it isn’t. That’s often what happens when you try to cram something pro with lots of features into a box quarter of the size of a full spec model. What’s nice is that you don’t even have to know much about EOS or PowerShot user-interfaces to just pick this thing up and start shooting.
The main control dial pretty much sets the agenda for what options pop up on the display which means that you don’t have to sift through a list of greyed out words that aren’t applicable when you don’t need to. The upshot is that most of the experience can take place on top of the live view through the lens without actually having to get into the menus proper. The downside is that it’s easy to miss features sometimes, or forget where you found them before, but the trade-off is well worth it.
Combined with the physical ease of use of this camera – with all the buttons nicely spaced out and everything within intuitive reach – this really is a very nice device to use. Sure, one could argue that a touchscreen would be hanfy but it’s not particularly necessary in this case.
Canon PowerShot G16: Pro picture power
Again, it’s another category that the G16 simply aces without even realising there was a test to be passed at all. The DIGIC 6 image processor – effectively the computer at the core of any camera – is as good as Canon offers right now in any of its snappers. Between that and a decent buffer size, one of its most impressive tricks is that it can shoot full resolution photographs at a rate of 9.3 frames per second, and it can do it for as long as you have space on your memory card. It’s ludicrously impressive.
This engine is also clever enough to shoot Full HD video at a rate of 60fps. That makes the action far smoother when you record it. It’s rather like looking at an image of pure glass rather than the stutters of most camera and cameraphone footage. What’s more, it also means that it can produce some slow motion effects too.
Of course, a compact can’t have everything, though. And the glaring photographic shortcoming of the G16 is that it’s got a relatively small 12.1MP sensor. It’s not that it’s titchy. It’s just compact sized rather than a DSLR-like APS-C or a Micro Four Thirds camera. What that means is that you’d expect a bit of a struggle in low light conditions.
Fortunately, we were rather elated with how it manages to compensate. Both the dynamic image stabilisation system and back-illumination of the sensor mean that not only is it easier to hold still at lower shutter speeds but there’s also something of a light sensitivity boost too. In real money, what all this equates to is that it performs more like a bigger camera and we rarely struggled to get what we needed no matter the conditions.
Finally, let’s not forget the last of the holy trinity of photography – the lens. Sorry to disappoint but we’ve nothing but good things to write about here either. It’s a 5x zoom piece of glass that runs from f/1.8 at the wide end to f/2.2 at the other. Translation: really, really good. Ok, you might want more zoom; you might also be wrong.
Dan Sung
Canon PowerShot G16: Photo filter features
So the Canon G16 looks great, it feels great, it’s a dream to use and the picture quality is stunning but, step closer, there’s more.
It would be easy to have kept this enthusiast’s device quite dry but Canon has really pushed the boat out and succeeded in making photography with it also fun. There’s a main filter mode with an impressive set to play with including: fish eye, HDR, miniature and toy camera alongside a background defocus that actually looks quite good. Again, though, there’s more. This isn’t where the fun times end.
Just about every other mode – from video to all the different scenes available – they also have colour tweaks and photographic twists to have a fiddle with. Whether it’s to give an effect as if you’re using film or choosing a setting that highlights reds or greens specifically, there’s quite a mind-bending amount to explore.
We would like to give a special mention, however, to the all-new Star mode which comes in three different flavours. You can capture an image of star trails automatically, try a user-selected time-lapse mode or just go for a single, well-exposed snap. In an ideal world, you’d have a tripod but even if you rest this thing on its back, it will still do the magic. If you’ve never tried taking photos of the night sky, then you’re in for a treat.
Canon PowerShot G16: Wi-Fi
Probably the only feature that’s predictably so-so is the Wi-Fi. This isn’t particularly the fault of the G16. Nobody has quite made camera connectivity as easy as it needs to be just yet. The result is that it’s always simpler just to upload and transfer images manually by using the SD card instead. All the same, if you are interested in the Wi-Fi, then there’s quite a lot at your disposal here.
You can use the G16 to broadcast its own signal so that you can connect it direct to a smartphone or tablet or printer or such out in the field wherever you are. It’s not super easy but it works. You can also piggy a Wi-Fi network from a router and publish straight to Facebook or Twitter and that’s not bad either. The problem we found there, though, was that it wasn’t always able to find our network despite the signal being very loud and very clear, and that rather puts you off the whole experience. SD cards just work and they work first time.
Canon PowerShot G16: Verdict
It’s brilliant. There’s no criticism that you could level at this camera apart from that it’s quite expensive at £529. One could buy a lot of cameras for that money, but could one buy one as good as the Canon PowerShot G16? No. One could actually spend £100 more and quite easily end up with something worse.
It’s fun, it’s stylish, it takes superb pictures, captures lovely video and it still manages to remain compact. If it’s a big little camera you want at your side, then this is definitely it.
Canon PowerShot G16: available now for £529 – Check the latest prices with Bing
Article source: http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/2013/8/27/pentax_announces_new_lenses_and_new.htm
Canon PowerShot G16 review
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