Ever since I went looking for a family camera (I picked the s230) I found many people in the hospital that I work with that are into cameras. Because I've become somewhat knowledgeable about camera's, I often am given the opportunity to "try out" new camera's. Doctors are especially useful because they want to impress others with their newest expensive purchase.
When I bought my S230, I was very close to buying a G3, it had great features, and was very reliable. The two biggest reasons I didn't get it was that it was a little bit too "professional", I just didn't need that many options. The 2nd reason is that it wasn't very portable. I needed a camera that I could literally slip into the diaper bag, just in case we wanted it. The G series do not fit that bill at all.
My opinion is that the G5 will fit anyone’s picture needs in a camera but will not fit everyone’s "needs" in a camera simply because it is geared more towards the intermediate/advanced crowd of photographers. But please I try to make my reviews as unbiased as I can so read on and decide for yourselves.
Picture Quality: A
A camera's basic function, beyond all the "extra's" that they may advertise is to take a picture. Canon's series of cameras does not drop the ball here, the G5 takes some of clearest, most finely detailed pictures I have ever seen from a digital camera. Now this does not mean that the camera is as good as the top quality film pictures you might see. At 5 mega pixels you will not notice much loss in picture quality but as I have read, you won't get the same quality as the top film camera's until they get into the 7 or 8 mega pixel range.
The G5 doesn't outshine the other 5 mega pixel camera in any one category, no it outshines them by being excellent in all categories. I found that taking pictures in lower lighting tends to be a problem since the G5 seems to darken the picture a tad bit. But I think that this also allows shadows to be captured extremely well. As for colors all I can say is "wow!", it is very detailed in colors, I took some pictures of roses at the Portland Rose Garden and they were magnificent. One thing that is ultra cool is the detail on the G5 is enough to get the reflection on the eyeball on a person you are taking, so you can zoom in on the eyeball and see a reflection. Very cool.
The biggest problem I have seen is a bit of chromatic aberration in some of the photo's taken when there is a dark backstop to the photo's. This means you might see a little purple in the black. I did see a little bit of snowcaps in bright light, or a lightness on objects.
Flash: A+
Ah why can't Canon give the same flash quality of the G series to the Elph series of cameras. Sigh, anyway the flash is fantastic! You can set it so that it can give different flash intensity, at its highest setting you can take a picture in a dark room with getting details 20 feet away. That is a good flash no matter what kind of camera it is.
Battery: A+
Now I got to play around with the G3 and it seems that they have a fusion battery in the G5, the thing will go forever! I was taking a ton of photo's at least 400-500 of them, of anything I could think of, and the battery didn't even go past the 3/4 mark. Canon has outdone themselves with the battery, oh and by the way all of those were with the LCD screen on. Now the only bad thing is when it does start going down on the indicator, it drops like a rock, and when it says battery is low, it means you are about to be SOL or severely outta luck. (clean translation) it doesn't mean you have a dozen or so pictures left.
LCD Screen: A
Canon decided to keep the same LCD Screen as the G3 a 1.8 inch screen. Easy to see in most light and with the additional ability to flip it out to the left and twist it backwards so that you can see it from the front, it makes the camera very utilitarian. The twisted action also lets you keep the screen facing towards the camera thus protecting it when not in use. One of the smartest things I have ever seen on a digital camera, and although the design is older I think it is still the best design out there. The only bad point is that the LCD screen doesn't show all of the picture that the camera will take, I'd say almost 20% is missing from the LCD screen. It'll let you see what you are focusing on but you might not see uncle bob standing just outside the picture on the LCD screen.
Quickness: A-
Hmm I honestly think my S230 and especially the S400 I tested started much faster than the G5. Well does have a much bigger lens but from the push of the power button to the extension of the lens to take a shot, the startup will take about 4-5 seconds. Unless you have it on already, don't expect to take a quick action shot. If the camera is already on it will take about 2 shots per second, so you can take a picture of your kid doing the high jump, if your ready for it. It will take about 50 shots at the high speed before it has to dump its memory buffer onto the flash card. More than is needed for most action situations. Although it is fast on the instant pictures, the startup time forces me to give it a A-.
Compatibility: A
Being of the same general design as the G3 it will take all of the G3's lens converters although it'll look a bit off being that the G3 was a metallic colored camera and the G5 is black, but it'll save you money if you owned the G3.
Features: A+
Who needs all the features on this camera? I don't but jeez if you want the most obscure feature you will be able to find it on the G5. Feature rich is a good description for this camera, Howard Creech and Yasakugo will be able to explain the features is far more detail than I can but I will say a bit about a few of them. Almost everyone has a few they use on a consistent basis, maybe increasing the flash or changing the ISO setting, well with the wheel knob on top you can program the G5 so that 2 of these common settings are on the wheel, just a turn of your thumb and they are set. Very nice. Almost every other function is just a button push away, exposure setting, menu, white balance, and of course the very nice FUNC button common on the upper end models of Canon.
Lens: A
Oh how could I forget about the lens. It is a very nice 4x zoom lense that will fulfill most of your zoom needs, plus with the combatibility and ability to add on other lenses including G3 stuff, you will be able to increase the zoom, make it wide angle, whatever you want to pay for really. I had no problem with the lense other than it doesn't lay flush with the camera as my favorites the elph line, but nothing is perfect!
Purtiness: A
I personally liked the metallic color of the G3 but the G5 isn't anything to look down upon. It is a handsome camera, and the all black does sort of add some sexiness to it. I personally think for pure looks the Elph series beats it out, but maybe people that are impressed with bigger size will be more impressed with the G5.
Price: A-
This is of course the newest camera out there and has the best technology but even so, the G5 isn't cheap by anyone’s standards. With prices online being between $650-$800 and offline you can probably add another $100-200 on top of that, this camera will run into your wallet quite a bit. The only reason I give it a A- instead of a B+ is because it is the newest thing and you have to pay for that most of the time.
And the rest...
There are a lot of cool features built into this camera, many I've already mentioned, but one of the coolest is the ability to add a voice over to any picture, so if you get a picture of uncle bob smiling holding a bat, you can say "oh bob got hit in the crouch because he was smiling for the camera when he should've been watching the ball". But of course with the G5's fast picture taking you should've captured the moment on film too ;p
The only thing that I really didn't like about the camera is the lens cap. I know a small detail but I couldn't keep the thing on. I tried and tried but even in the carrying case it would come off when jostled too much. A clear lens filter is going to be a necessity on this camera because I'd be afraid the cap would come off and the lens would get scratched.
Thanks for reading my review, I enjoyed writing it and if you want to look at some of my other camera reviews (especially canon's) check these out. They are arranged from the newest at the top to the oldest at the bottom.
Canon S400
http://www.epinions.com/content_103691685508
Canon S230
http://www.epinions.com/content_78630129284
Olympus D-40 Zoom
http://www.epinions.com/content_73778630276
Sony Mavica MVC-CD200 (I still love the CD burner idea)
http://www.epinions.com/content_73001766532
Fuji Finepix 2600
http://www.epinions.com/content_71749635716
