G2 AF - a joke?

Philip Persio said:

Someone in this forum already mentioned that the G2 autofocusing
system would function satisfactorily with AF mode set to "Single".

However, it is necessary to set AF mode to "Continuous", if you
want to use remote control or self timer to take pictures.

I would not say G2 is the best choice in the market, but according
to those samples posted on the WEB, I would at least say G2 can
take better pictures if it is compared to the Nikon 5000 or even
the 5700.

Check it out yourself!

http://www.pbase.com/jimmy01/g2vsd7ivs5700

Click to expand...

I would say that according to these samples the quality on the 5700 and D7i appear better to me then the G2. I will admit that this is too subjective to draw any real conclusions. Its more of personal taste, and I find the 5700 and 7i personally more appealing in picture quality and color accuracy on these samples. The G2 begins to show it's age against these new comers.

That's what really irritates me. When it's on, the G2's image quality is unparalleled. It's a pain to have to put up with such a crummy autofocus system when everything else about the camera is so insanely great.

Philip Persio said:

I would not say G2 is the best choice in the market, but according
to those samples posted on the WEB, I would at least say G2 can
take better pictures if it is compared to the Nikon 5000 or even
the 5700.

Click to expand...

Jim K said:

KFVH said:

Why don't you tell us how you really feel ???????

Have you considered prozac?

I think I will hang on to my G2.

Click to expand...

Is that an endorsement on your part? I'll take your word on it.
Prozac must really work : ))

Regards,
Jim K

Click to expand...

I bet you will take it any way you can get it. You seem easy. Have a nice life.

I have the G1, and I got it as a replacement for a QV3000 that
died when the lens mechanism decided to go wrong. The
G1 has the ability to capture an image that is say 10 percent
better than those of the Casio, but the autofocus and metering
are no where near the quality of the Casio. Here is where the
line gets drawn in the sand, and where a lot of these insane
postings come from. Which do you want? Point and shoot
metering and AF, or the image quality? Stupid question forced
on us by the manufacturers that so far have never put both in
the same body. Jim will always come down on the side of the
camera in these discussions, and I will always come down on the
side of the image quality. Now, if someone will convince Canon
and Fuji that the 602 body with the Sony sensor and the Canon
imaging firmware and software, would sell a lot of cameras, maybe
we can have both. For now, the choice has to be made. I choose
image quality, and therefore I choose the G2 and the D7's as the
top cameras, because they produce no errors that can not be
fixed or adjusted. Jim has always chosen differently.

Erik Stiegler said:

Philip Persio said:

I would not say G2 is the best choice in the market, but according
to those samples posted on the WEB, I would at least say G2 can
take better pictures if it is compared to the Nikon 5000 or even
the 5700.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Look out for Canon's solution af assist clothing range in high contrast chequered patterns .

Bob Williams said:

I have the G1, and I got it as a replacement for a QV3000 that
died when the lens mechanism decided to go wrong. The
G1 has the ability to capture an image that is say 10 percent
better than those of the Casio, but the autofocus and metering
are no where near the quality of the Casio.

Click to expand...

G1/G2 also tend to blow out highlights more than Casio messing up portraits .

Member said:

I choose image quality, and therefore I choose the G2 and the D7's as the
top cameras, because they produce no errors that can not be
fixed or adjusted.

Click to expand...

Bob I'm not sure what you mean here...

"Jim will always come down on the side of the
camera in these discussions, and I will always come down on the
side of the image quality."

Image quality is always important to me too. But I don't consider the G2 to be superior to any thing else out there. Sure the quality is good, but to give it the same crappy AF system as compacts and subcompacts is simply unacceptable to me. I also based my opinions on the d7/7i on simular grounds. Sure the d7/7i can take great pictures, but again, not the best out there, and compounded with other features I find annoying reduce the camera's worth to me. I don't give a hoot who makes the camera, I show no brand loyalty. In fact I have been criticising the Exx for the excessive amount of noise since day one! Nikon, Canon, Oly, Minolta, Sony, Fuji, makes no difference to me what brand it is. i look at everything, quality, features, built, and bugs, and base my opinions accordingly. Obviously my opinions may not be shared by some. Doesn't matter to me. I'm not here to only talk about the best things about each camera, I like to talk about the bad too. All too often people are either affraid or intimidated about talking about negative things because some people get so freaking defensive should any one say anything negative about their latest camera purchase.

Regards,
Jim K

G2's exposure is also not consistent. Like the other person said Casio has much better metering than Canon.

G2 over/underexposes with external flash as its not completely controlling the flash using full E-TTL. sometimes its like they both are working on their own.

G2 over/underexposes even in mid-daylight sometimes thinking the small shadow part of the whole frame is more important than other.

Who are G2 design engineers???

Why I bought G2? Reading specs, thinking it could be better G1. as i have all accesseries.

Next Camera FOR SURE will not be CANON.

Only LCD is too good in G2 and rest all are almost comparable to $300 camera.

Hi all,

Just want to share my view here.

I believe my A40 may not produce images as sharp as G2 (with so complains on the 'blurry' images taken). But I was very happy with the quality of the images taken until I bumped into threads complaining about unsharpness with Canon cameras.
I got worried for a while then.
And then I decided to develop some of the shots I liked.
Guess what?

A shop assistant came up to me & asked what brand my DC was because he was impressed! He confirmed with me that they didn't do any after touch except cropping the size to 3:2.
Okay, so I examined the photos myself and boy, they are very sharp indeed!
One photo, a portrait of a red flower has 3D look!

The photos were then shown to friends and the comments were either: "They are so sharp and vivid that make me flinch" or "impossible, DC can't produce such good images".
Now I know, what you see on your monitor is not WYSIWYG on a printed one.
I won't bother about 'unsharpness' anymore
.
Now I'm only worried about how to improve my photo taking skills.
Just my 0.02.
Enjoy!

Borami,

Check out the link below my signature for examples of scanned images. I always "clean-up" my images whether digital or scanned with PS 6. I have found only two negatives: 1. the time it takes and 2. lint/dust. It turns out that the lint is not much of a problem if you scan the images by removing 1 strip at a time without undue handling of them. If you're careless, it's more of a problem. When I scan them directly (from the pkg) I rarely have a problem.

Borami said:

Could you tell me how satisfied you are with the scanned images of
negatives in compare to G1's? I have a G2 and I'm just starting out
MF cameras and i'm interested in scanning. But, I'm not sure about
the quality of scanned images compare to G2. Any sharpness loss,
color shift, or any other things to worry about? BTW, I'm not
trying to print from the scanned file. Maybe for just fix some and
put them on the web. But, I'd like to have a good quality.

Blue said:

Giacinto said:

G2 - Fun to use?

In a recent thread, users were asked to score the G2 autofocus on a
rating of 1-5, 1 being the lowest.I was very suprised that, despite
the many complaints about poor AF performance, scores were still
much higher than I expected.

The G2 was advertised as having SLR-like control over picture
taking. My Nikon SLR has quick, accurate AF and, in addition, you
can immediately confirm any AF failure through the viewfinder. G2
autofocus is the exact opposite, slow, inaccurate and worst of all,
it LIES to you. And the manual focus option really is a joke.

Don't make excuses for this camera, like - others arent much
better, Well I didn't buy anothe brand, or - you must expect a
failure rate with any camera, Not one caused by the arbitary nature
of one of it's most basic functions. Even the best photragrapher
will select and discard, but too see otherwise good shots ruined by
basic AF failure is inexcusable. Value for money arguements? If I
had been given the choice of paying more and getting AF that
actually worked, then I would have paid more - but Canon appear to
bew proud of the G2 AF.

I still l use my G2. It can, in the right circumstances, produce
stunning results and the convenience factor is so high, BUT I am
increasingly using my SLR when I want to be certain that I dont get
failure due to arbritary technical deficiencies in my equipment. I
dont like using my dustbin for print storage.

So the G2 has become somewhat of a rather expensive 'fun' camera,
for more serious work, for the moment - it's back to film.
--
Agostino

Click to expand...

--
Blue
http://www.pbase.com/image/1582173

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I bought one of these also... I thought, I'll use the more complex Nikon CP5000 and let my wife use this! After all, my Canon SLR had very easy to use presets that my wife could use so I figured it would be the same.

Well, I get the thing home and play with it for a couple of days and all my Landscape and architechture shots seem to be fine and crisp. Well we start doing more things like taking the family out to the amusement park and trying to get family pictures at the local park and the Focus Monster Rears his ugly head in a bad way! First I get a good shot of my whole family and find out that the truck behind and to the left stole the focus, or so I thought. Then, I take a bunch of pictures of the kids at the amusement park, they're just moving normally, and I find about 35 of the 100 pictures I took were blurry and out of focus. This was when I decided to start looking at other cameras (all I had was the CP5000, the pictures were always in focus) and bought my Sony F707 using the Sears PM deal and sold my G2 just yesterday on EBAY.

Anyway, all of that doesn't matter to me that much... What bugs me about the whole thing, you'll see several reviews throughout the web on the camera (steve's digicams, Imaging Resources, DPreview and IGRABLIFE) and not one of them mentions focusing issues! To go even further, if you say something bad about the camera people like IGRABLIFE will defend it as though there are no other real options. Truth be told, and I'm speaking the truth about my experience (and several others), the G2 is an average camera overall at best (it doesn't matter if the pictures can be stunning If capturing them is next to impossible and I'm not Ethan Hunt). Sure I got some great shots with it, including one of my favorite landscape pictures that I've taken, but the Focusing totally blew that camera as an option for me.

--

http://www.pbase.com/elterrible

Giacinto said:

G2 - Fun to use?

In a recent thread, users were asked to score the G2 autofocus on a
rating of 1-5, 1 being the lowest.I was very suprised that, despite
the many complaints about poor AF performance, scores were still
much higher than I expected.

The G2 was advertised as having SLR-like control over picture
taking. My Nikon SLR has quick, accurate AF and, in addition, you
can immediately confirm any AF failure through the viewfinder. G2
autofocus is the exact opposite, slow, inaccurate and worst of all,
it LIES to you. And the manual focus option really is a joke.

Don't make excuses for this camera, like - others arent much
better, Well I didn't buy anothe brand, or - you must expect a
failure rate with any camera, Not one caused by the arbitary nature
of one of it's most basic functions. Even the best photragrapher
will select and discard, but too see otherwise good shots ruined by
basic AF failure is inexcusable. Value for money arguements? If I
had been given the choice of paying more and getting AF that
actually worked, then I would have paid more - but Canon appear to
bew proud of the G2 AF.

I still l use my G2. It can, in the right circumstances, produce
stunning results and the convenience factor is so high, BUT I am
increasingly using my SLR when I want to be certain that I dont get
failure due to arbritary technical deficiencies in my equipment. I
dont like using my dustbin for print storage.

So the G2 has become somewhat of a rather expensive 'fun' camera,
for more serious work, for the moment - it's back to film.
--
Agostino

Click to expand...

That's the truth Kristian! I and many others are extremely happy with the very fast focusing of the Sony F707 or Nikon Offerings (that forum is littered with former disgruntled Canon (including G2) owners).

--

http://www.pbase.com/elterrible

Kristian S. said:

21farms said:

although it doesn't make me particularly happy, i think canon is a
smart company in the business to make money. they have a broad line
of good products at competitive prices and a clear upgrade path. is
the G2's AF perfect? of course not and they're not about to fix it
either...how else are they going to get you to upgrade to a G3. or
to plunk down even bigger bucks for a DSLR?

Click to expand...

Any good company in the money making business knows that a happy
customer is a customer that will come back. It is a lot easier to
keep an old customer than to get new ones.

If Canon just ignores the G2 owners, many are going to other brands...

Kristian

Click to expand...

Do yourself a favor! Rent the F707 for just one day... You know I have to be only interested in the image quality as Sony made the camera very proprietary and if the images weren't twice as good as anything in the price range, I wouldn't feel justified buying it. Seriously though, anyone who thinks I'm joking rent one and then come back and tongue lash me if I'm wrong.

--

http://www.pbase.com/elterrible

Erik Stiegler said:

Philip Persio said:

I would not say G2 is the best choice in the market, but according
to those samples posted on the WEB, I would at least say G2 can
take better pictures if it is compared to the Nikon 5000 or even
the 5700.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Ironically, I have sitting on the desk next to me the first print made from the Sony DSC-F707 I bought yesterday afternoon. I'll reserve final judgement until I've let the G2 and F707 fight it out for a week or so.

G2 vs. F707 first impressions:

The F707 handles much better. The zoom control is far more precise. Manual focus is useable. Image quality is excellent.

I prefer Canon's RAW format to Sony's choice of TIFF for uncompressed images. A histogram display on the F707 would be nice.

Pete Perry said:

Do yourself a favor! Rent the F707 for just one day... You know I
have to be only interested in the image quality as Sony made the
camera very proprietary and if the images weren't twice as good as
anything in the price range, I wouldn't feel justified buying it.
Seriously though, anyone who thinks I'm joking rent one and then
come back and tongue lash me if I'm wrong.

Click to expand...

Yep, and the end result will be the pictures! Oh well, you can recoup most of the money you spent on the G2 on EBAY, that's what I did. Of course, you might want to go a little easier on it when trying to sell it as you might not get many bidders if you mention focus problems.

--

http://www.pbase.com/elterrible

Erik Stiegler said:

G2 vs. F707 first impressions:

The F707 handles much better. The zoom control is far more precise.
Manual focus is useable. Image quality is excellent.

I prefer Canon's RAW format to Sony's choice of TIFF for
uncompressed images. A histogram display on the F707 would be nice.

Pete Perry said:

Do yourself a favor! Rent the F707 for just one day... You know I
have to be only interested in the image quality as Sony made the
camera very proprietary and if the images weren't twice as good as
anything in the price range, I wouldn't feel justified buying it.
Seriously though, anyone who thinks I'm joking rent one and then
come back and tongue lash me if I'm wrong.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Oh and a couple more things...

These are some of the best that I've taken with the F707

http://www.pbase.com/elterrible/f707
http://www.pbase.com/elterrible/joeys_birthday

These are some of the best I've taken with the G2

http://www.pbase.com/elterrible/g2

This one here, taken from a DX4900 (I wanted more from the camera and exchanged it but, the 4900 always focused well).



--

http://www.pbase.com/elterrible

Erik Stiegler said:

G2 vs. F707 first impressions:

The F707 handles much better. The zoom control is far more precise.
Manual focus is useable. Image quality is excellent.

I prefer Canon's RAW format to Sony's choice of TIFF for
uncompressed images. A histogram display on the F707 would be nice.

Pete Perry said:

Do yourself a favor! Rent the F707 for just one day... You know I
have to be only interested in the image quality as Sony made the
camera very proprietary and if the images weren't twice as good as
anything in the price range, I wouldn't feel justified buying it.
Seriously though, anyone who thinks I'm joking rent one and then
come back and tongue lash me if I'm wrong.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Pete Perry said:

Do yourself a favor! Rent the F707 for just one day... You know I
have to be only interested in the image quality as Sony made the
camera very proprietary and if the images weren't twice as good as
anything in the price range, I wouldn't feel justified buying it.
Seriously though, anyone who thinks I'm joking rent one and then
come back and tongue lash me if I'm wrong.

Click to expand...

Do yourself a favor! The Sony F707 is built and caters to people who do point-and-shoots more than tinkering with the manual settings. Sony knows what makes a digital camera sell favorably to the masses, and that's what they do best. Sadly, each F707 TIFF is 14MB and above, way too big for a 128mb stick and too uneconomical.

By the way, the Canon G1 still gets a sale every so often despite the new G2's presence.
--
http://printerboyweb.net/G2

P.S. My Casio QV-10 continues to chug along five years from its purchase.

You are aware that the F707 is pretty much as flexible as the G2 right (and in some cases more)? As for the G1, I actually like a lot of the photos that come from that camera but have never used it myself. Umm, also there are plans to release larger memory sticks over the next few months (possibly as high as 512 Megs) and Sony has released the design to other manufacturers (like Lexar and Sandisk) in the hopes of making it a standard.

--

http://www.pbase.com/elterrible

PB said:

Pete Perry said:

Do yourself a favor! Rent the F707 for just one day... You know I
have to be only interested in the image quality as Sony made the
camera very proprietary and if the images weren't twice as good as
anything in the price range, I wouldn't feel justified buying it.
Seriously though, anyone who thinks I'm joking rent one and then
come back and tongue lash me if I'm wrong.

Click to expand...

Do yourself a favor! The Sony F707 is built and caters to people
who do point-and-shoots more than tinkering with the manual
settings. Sony knows what makes a digital camera sell favorably to
the masses, and that's what they do best. Sadly, each F707 TIFF is
14MB and above, way too big for a 128mb stick and too uneconomical.

By the way, the Canon G1 still gets a sale every so often despite
the new G2's presence.
--
http://printerboyweb.net/G2

P.S. My Casio QV-10 continues to chug along five years from its
purchase.

Click to expand...

Pete Perry said:

[snip -- been there done that]? ...
Umm, also there are plans to release larger memory sticks
over the next few months (possibly as high as 512 Megs) and Sony
has released the design to other manufacturers (like Lexar and
Sandisk) in the hopes of making it a standard.

Click to expand...

Next few months...exactly how much longer do Sony users have to wait for the "as high as 512 Megs"? It has been some eight months (and longer) since Sony released the F707, and the current Memory Stick continues to be topped out at 128MB -- the same level as Smartmedia cards. 256MB and 512MB SD cards are coming into the market, and Compactflash is already at 1GB.

[ Meanwhile, rumours fly that IBM might release a multi-gigabyte Microdrive. ]
--
http://printerboyweb.net/G2

Jim K53618 said:

I think some people place too much weight on reviewers and can't think > for themselves.

Click to expand...

Hmmm, so why are you telling me my camera is rubbish? Can I not decide that for myself? Fact is amtey, the proof is in the pudding, I've seen way to many wonderful photos taken with a G2 to write it off as a useless camera that is riddled with focus problems.

I believe when people talk about "SLR-like control over images" we're talking about metering control, not the AF.

--
My G2 collection on pbase:
http://www.pbase.com/natinha/galleries

The 707 has memory complications, no RAW mode, no saturation
adjustment, no way to turn off the terrible image smearing noise
reduction, and in general produces images that can not be recovered
in editing software, making it less of a choice than the Kodak camera
mentioned earlier. The 5000 is a joke that doesn't even have ttl at
all, and with any kind of add on lens, the flash sensor can not even
meter the subject. That is ignoring the smearing and edge artifact
problems that it's noise reduction produces. At least it's color is better
than the Sony. The G2 is the best of the bunch, if you want nuetral
color, and images that have no problems that can not be fixed in
editing. Jump thru all the hoops you want to, but the images speak
for themselves. The D7's spank them all in the hands of someone that
will learn to use it, and learn the editing workflow it requires. The G2
rules the 4mp arena on pure image quality, and the D7's the 5mp
arena on pure image quality. Quality means that the camera does
nothing that can not be corrected in software to the image deliberately.
Quality means that the user is in control, not the camera. I would
suggest that the G2 more closely fits that description than any other
consumer digicam at this time. The 707 and the 5000 do not qualify
as well as the 4800 mentioned earlier on the scale I and many others
use to judge these cameras.

Pete Perry said:

Well, I get the thing home and play with it for a couple of days
and all my Landscape and architechture shots seem to be fine and
crisp. Well we start doing more things like taking the family out
to the amusement park and trying to get family pictures at the
local park and the Focus Monster Rears his ugly head in a bad way!
First I get a good shot of my whole family and find out that the
truck behind and to the left stole the focus, or so I thought.
Then, I take a bunch of pictures of the kids at the amusement park,
they're just moving normally, and I find about 35 of the 100
pictures I took were blurry and out of focus. This was when I
decided to start looking at other cameras (all I had was the
CP5000, the pictures were always in focus) and bought my Sony F707
using the Sears PM deal and sold my G2 just yesterday on EBAY.

Anyway, all of that doesn't matter to me that much... What bugs me
about the whole thing, you'll see several reviews throughout the
web on the camera (steve's digicams, Imaging Resources, DPreview
and IGRABLIFE) and not one of them mentions focusing issues! To go
even further, if you say something bad about the camera people like
IGRABLIFE will defend it as though there are no other real options.
Truth be told, and I'm speaking the truth about my experience (and
several others), the G2 is an average camera overall at best (it
doesn't matter if the pictures can be stunning If capturing them is
next to impossible and I'm not Ethan Hunt). Sure I got some great
shots with it, including one of my favorite landscape pictures that
I've taken, but the Focusing totally blew that camera as an option
for me.

--

http://www.pbase.com/elterrible

Giacinto said:

G2 - Fun to use?

In a recent thread, users were asked to score the G2 autofocus on a
rating of 1-5, 1 being the lowest.I was very suprised that, despite
the many complaints about poor AF performance, scores were still
much higher than I expected.

The G2 was advertised as having SLR-like control over picture
taking. My Nikon SLR has quick, accurate AF and, in addition, you
can immediately confirm any AF failure through the viewfinder. G2
autofocus is the exact opposite, slow, inaccurate and worst of all,
it LIES to you. And the manual focus option really is a joke.

Don't make excuses for this camera, like - others arent much
better, Well I didn't buy anothe brand, or - you must expect a
failure rate with any camera, Not one caused by the arbitary nature
of one of it's most basic functions. Even the best photragrapher
will select and discard, but too see otherwise good shots ruined by
basic AF failure is inexcusable. Value for money arguements? If I
had been given the choice of paying more and getting AF that
actually worked, then I would have paid more - but Canon appear to
bew proud of the G2 AF.

I still l use my G2. It can, in the right circumstances, produce
stunning results and the convenience factor is so high, BUT I am
increasingly using my SLR when I want to be certain that I dont get
failure due to arbritary technical deficiencies in my equipment. I
dont like using my dustbin for print storage.

So the G2 has become somewhat of a rather expensive 'fun' camera,
for more serious work, for the moment - it's back to film.
--
Agostino

Click to expand...

Click to expand...