This was my first foray into digital photography, although I've been a photography enthusiast for years. In the film genre, my last two SLR's were a Canon A1 and a Canon Elan IIe. I've owned the Canon G3 for two months now and have been very pleased with it.
The Canon G3 is a relatively easy transition for anyone who has used a Canon SLR. The shooting modes include the familiar Auto (fully automatic, like a snapshot camera), Programmed (P), Shutter Value (Tv), Aperture Value (Av), and Manual (M) plus specialized modes for Portrait, Landscape and Nightscene photos. The G3 adds "stitch assist" mode for combining multiple shots (e.g. a panorama) and a movie mode. All of the shooting modes are arranged around a dial on the top of the camera that is familiar to Canon SLR users.
The camera is activated in either shooting mode or viewing mode with another lever-dial to the left of the shooting mode dial. Shooting mode is for taking pictures, viewing mode is for viewing shots already taken. Activating either mode activates the color LCD on the back of the camera, which can be rotated 180 degrees in the horizontal and 180 degrees in the vertical, allowing for very flexible positioning. The LCD is clear and bright, with a brightness control for viewing under difficult lighting conditions (e.g. bright sunlight). The camera's "off" button is in the center of this dial, which is awkward at first but easy to use once you get used to it.
The shutter button is conveniently placed in the front right side of the top of the camera, with the zoom-in, zoom out lever wrapped around it. There's a 4x optical zoom and a digital zoom that increases magnification to 14x, although like with most digital cameras, it's usually better to skip the digital zoom and do greater enlargements in your photo-editing software (where it's easier to see the effects of pixelation). The G3 allows you to turn the digital zoom off, and even when it's turned on it's easy to tell when you're using digital zoom.
As with Canon SLR's, holding the shutter halfway allows you to view settings and lock both the autofocus and the aperture, then recompose you picture with the locked point off center. The user can also move the AutoFocus (AF) frame anywhere within the composition using buttons on the back of the camera. You can also set AF to continuous or single and "bracket" the focus (as well as the aperture) in three successive shots.
There are three light metering modes - evaluative (multiple zones), center weighted average, and spot AE point. There also are two continuous shooting modes - normal and high speed - that do a good job of allowing you to capture multiple frames in quick succession.
A hotshoe (compatible with some, but not all older Canon Speedlites - check the Canon website) sits in the middle of the camera's top, and a monochrome LCD with setting information is on the left. Again, the monochrome LCD will be familiar to users of Canon SLR's. The camera can also show settings in the color LCD used to frame pictures, similar to the "through the lens" settings view of an SLR.
The back of the camera contains a four way rocker switch used to set white balance and exposure compensation (it's great to have a shortcut to these two functions, since you'll use them a lot if you're serious about your photos and shoot under different lighting conditions). You also can choose auto white balance, which works well under most conditions (and works best when using an older Speedlite).
There also are nine other buttons that control two sets of menus (a general menu and a functions menu) plus specific functions like manual focus, macro mode, red eye reduction, AF frame placement and flash (on, off, auto). The buttons interact with the menus and the combination is intimidating at first, but I got used to them after using the camera for a week or two (some complexity is the price you pay for a camera that gives you enormous control over each shot).
The camera uses a rechargeable, replaceable (i.e. you can carry a spare) Lithium Ion battery that is easily accessed through a hatch in the bottom of the camera body. The battery life is good and it recharges quickly (1-2 hours in most cases). Lithium Ion batteries have no "memory", so you can recharge whenever you like.
The camera also comes with a USB cable for connecting to a PC and software (Canon's Zoom Browser) for downloading and organizing you images, plus a basic image editor. A good photo editor (I recommend ULead Photo Impact) is a necessary add on if you're serious about editing photos.
The only criticism I have of the G3 is it's optical viewfinder. First, the viewfinder is not "through the lens", so you have to be concerned about parallax (what you see is NOT what you get). Second, the lens blocks part of the viewfinder's view when in telephoto mode. Third, the optical viewfinder can be awkward to use given the number of buttons (and the color LCD screen) located on the back of the camera. Fortunately this is not a reason to avoid the G3 - I can't think of a reason to use the viewfinder instead of the color LCD (being an old SLR dog, I tried using the viewfinder at first and soon discovered there was no reason to).
