G15 low light issue

This is by design, probably to help with sensor noise from longer exposures. And they probably feel that shutter speeds longer than 1 second would not be hand-holdable.

No bulb mode but there should be hacked firmware available soon.

This does not make sense to me. I have never seen such behaviour from any other camera. I bought it mainly to take shots of night city. 5" and iso400 would be perfectly fine for me. But 1" and iso 3200 is too noisy and 15" and iso80 is to dark and too slow. I am very angry, because now I will have to buy another camera.

You should have done your homework. Most Canon compact cameras these days have this behaviour. It's annoying, but that's the way it is.

Damn. So I have two questions:

1) is there any chance this would be allowed in alternative firmware?

2) What camera should I buy in similar price level that has remote control, fast lens (not necessailry as fast as G15) that does not have this idiotic feature? (I know about XZ-1, but it has terrible movies)

You should be glad instead, 15 sec, iso80 will collect 3x more light/photons than 5 sec, iso400, and will therefore give you better IQ. If 15 sec, iso80 gives a JPEG that's to dark, then just shoot RAW and increase the brightness in the RAW converter.

I think you know the answer already, it's simple it's the XZ-2 !!!

Well, I was not precise with the numbers, I am sorry. My point was: now I am forced to use long exposures while it would be ok to use much faster exposures with some noise in the picture. It is enthusiasts camera and enthusiasts do now what consequences result from using hi iso and long exposure.

It is another 100usd, which is over my budget, given that now I lost some money on buying wrong (but otherwise perfect) camera.

Read the manual p. 162, middle of page.

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Phil

Thaks Phil. Could you by more specific, please? I turned off the IS, but it does not make any difference. And there is no explanation of this behaviour.

G15 user manual p.162: "While shutter speed 1.3 or slower, ISO speed is 80 and cannot be changed."

Use manual mode in that situation then you can increase your ISO.

Even when set to manual mode the ISO will be forced to 80 for shutter speeds lower than 1 second.

Sorry about that but it don't on my G12 Just tried it.

OK, but still, if you shoot RAW, then it doesn't really matter. Let's say that you want to shoot at 5 sec, iso400. That's not possible (for whatever reason), but then you can just shoot at 5 sec, iso80 instead and push the exposure/brightness a bit more than two stops afterwards in the RAW converter. The final result will be pretty much the same as if shooting at 5 sec, iso400. You are not forced to use a longer shutterspeed than you want to. But on the other hand, a longer exposure will collect more light and give you better IQ, so why not?

Yeah. You are correct about being able to do it on the G12. I just did on mine also.

But when I tried it on the G15, it doesn't work. I just set M mode, 1/125 sec and f4.0, ISO 3200. Then I lowered the shutter speed with the front dial a click at a time. As soon as it crossed 1 second, the ISO dropped to 80 and grayed out, so that it could not be changed.  But that had worked OK on the G12, and I went down to 13 seconds with the ISO still at 3200.

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kind regards
Dale

Must be a new thing on the G's now. I suppose if you need a tripod anyway it keeps it at 80 ISO to minimise noise.

if you want to do it in black & white & add a bit of noise or freeze something using the fastest speed possible then I guess your stuffed.

The G15 loses the dedicated ISO dial, apparently that wasn't everything it lost.

Nice one Canon!.

Thanks a lot, I'll definitely try it asap. The problem with long exposure is that I am going to have people in the pictures. I don't care if they are a little bit blurred, but it has to be recognizable who is it. I bought this camera for urban exploration, in other words just for documentary pictures.