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G1X Is this the best Canon can do?

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bigpigbig

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The way I see it, there are three sets of cameras I want to own.

1) DSLR. (I have a 1D MKIV and a 5D MKII) - Big, heavy, top of the line IQ and lens choices. Fast. Looking forward to see the new 1DX and 5D(whatever).

2) Compact. - Not small enough to go in a pocket, but light and easy to take along in a small bag. Decent IQ. Up to 8x10 they rival DSLR. Some have changeable lenses. (I have an Olympus E-PL1)

3) Slim Compact - Fit in a pocket. Small enough that you could easily take it anywhere. IQ not up for printing large, slow, not many creative options) (I have a Canon SD980 IS)

Sorry for the long lead in:

I was super excited to replace my "Old" E-PL1 with the Canon G1X. I thought with the latest (Digic 5) processor and well substantiated line of 12 G series cameras, Canon would hit it out of the park.

Well... have they?

Price is $799.

I realize that many new "features" have been introduced, but I care mostly about IQ. I shoot mostly in Manual mode.

For the same price, my Olympus came with a 14-42 f3.5-5.6 (28-84mm eqiv.) and I bought a Panny 20mm f1.7. $800 all in.

Two years later and Canon offers us this. The IQ should blow me away.

Well...I went here: http://www.dpreview.com/previews/canong1x/page6.asp

I put in Fuji X100, Nikon V1, and E-PL1 against the G1X.

The E-PL1 blows them all away in every ISO both JPG and RAW. OK, just so I don't get bashed, maybe it doesn't blow them away, but it is as good as or better at every ISO.

My big question is: have we gotten NOWHERE with IQ in this mid-size camera in TWO YEARS? I was so excited until I saw this.
 
I to have an old EPL1. The kit lens is okay but I normally keep the 20 1.7 on it and that is a nice combo.

I have long noticed that the Oly Pens are the kings of the DPR "compared to" section. I don't know what it is about the testing but to my eyes the Olys seem to be better hands down. In real life shooting I'm far from sure but in the test shots the PENs are great.

I wish the new Canon had less reach and a wider faster lens but that is my personal taste. They must have done some market research to see what the general public wanted. The early samples looked average but as many more shots roll in including a couple of DPR posters I really like what I am seeing.

I think the price will drop somewhat as the cameras become more available. I keep seeing anything from $600 to $700 as the desired price. Maybe $800 crosses some sort of line in the sand for any type of point and shoot no matter how good? If Best Buy eventually carries them a 10% coupon would make buyers think they are getting a deal.
 
I put the G1 X on RAW ISO 12,800 and compared it to your E-PL1 and I thought "what is this guy talking about? The G1 X image quality is just as good, preserves detail, keeps noise just as low." And then I realized the E-PL1 only goes up to ISO 3200. HELLO?! When I put the G1 X back down on 3200 the advantages all but jump off the screen and slap me in the face. Look at areas of high detail: everything but the corners, as has been discussed ad nauseum, has more detail than the E-PL1.

The steady progress of technology might be deccelerating as far as dramatic improvements in noise while adding more and more megapixels, but progress has still been made.
 
Who cares about JPG....not me....see raw in high ISO...then you see the real power in G1X
 
Having only acquired my G1X yesterday I haven't had time to draw any firm conclusions about its performance but like the OP I'm beginning to feel that Digital Cameras generally have reached a plateau.

Sure we have less noise now and wizz bang gizmos but when I look at my 2008 DLux4 IQ at base ISO there is still very little to match it at the size..even its replacement LX5 had a lesser lens.

My DSLR is a Sony A55 which is SLT and fails to match the image quality of my earlier A350. No more SLTs for me.

The m4/3 format seemed to promise so much but until I got hold of the G3 it was no match for my DSLR..now we can't even get decent lenses. The Lumix X Series compact lenses seems blurry. ( I do like the G3 )

At least Fuji have moved forward ...well you have to overlook stuck aperture blades and white orbs ... but image quality and colour are worth praising.... as is my 2 year old Leica X1!

Waste of money they cried as I bought my X1 but I'm still saying "wow" at the results.

And now to my G1X. My first G camera since the G9 and nothing seems to have changed.

Even the font used to write "Power Shot" looks as dated as it did in 2005 as do the menus and controls.

The shutter button is awful..for the money Canon I would like a proper shutter button like the Fuji X10..thankyou.
Af is slow poor. I've seen that already.

So what have I got in the G1X......an ugly jacket pocketable camera with a short zoom that takes great pictures but is otherwise a miserable brick and in my other pocket the Leica X1 for the serious shots.
 
I ask myself the same question re: the G1X. I really want some form of compact since lately "compact" means throwing a 35mm or 50mm prime on my D7000.

I am turned off by the high price. I am unimpressed with the slow lens. Sure it's no worse than a kit lens that comes with a Rebel or D3000, but if they want to target people who own DSLRs (as the product literature states) then they have to realize we're used to sharp lenses that are f2.8 for telephoto and f1.4 or f1.8 for prime AND we have a sensors that perform ridiculously well at high ISO not just one of those two parameters.

I would trade telephoto reach on the lens if they offered a f2.0-2.8 28-70...ish. And I sure as hell can't explain to myself why not get a GF3 or a GX1 with a pancake or the new 14-42 for a similar price and get an interchangeable lens system.

There are too many compromises and I can't help but think the real target audience is the person who buys a Rebel and NEVER takes off the kit lens.
 
bigpigbig said:
Price is $799.
Click to expand...
Seems reasonable to me at that price. Not everyone feels that way, of course.
bigpigbig said:
I realize that many new "features" have been introduced, but I care mostly about IQ. I shoot mostly in Manual mode.
Click to expand...
Hence the G1X would be an ideal alternative. If you shoot in manual, you'll not only appreciate the benefits of a camera like this, but you will appreciate the better layout and interface for the controls. Even DPreview found during their reviews that the E-PL1 was an underachiever when it came to "ease of use".
bigpigbig said:
For the same price, my Olympus came with a 14-42 f3.5-5.6 (28-84mm eqiv.) and I bought a Panny 20mm f1.7. $800 all in.
Click to expand...
Now you can enjoy the fine art of lens swapping whenever you want to take a photograph. If I want a DSLR, I'll buy a Full Frame DSLR like the 5D MKXX. If I want to compromise on light, lenses and capabilities, I'll buy a cropped APS-C sized sensor.
bigpigbig said:
Two years later and Canon offers us this. The IQ should blow me away.
Well...I went here: http://www.dpreview.com/previews/canong1x/page6.asp
Click to expand...
bigpigbig said:
I put in Fuji X100, Nikon V1, and E-PL1 against the G1X.
Click to expand...
Put your Olympus E-PL1 in and crank the ISO right up to 3200 and take a look at the embossing on the Glass Baileys bottle... now crank the ISO of the G1X up to 12,800 and compare the difference. The G1X has the better results even with much higher ISO and the E-PL1 exhibits much more noise.
bigpigbig said:
The E-PL1 blows them all away in every ISO both JPG and RAW. OK, just so I don't get bashed, maybe it doesn't blow them away, but it is as good as or better at every ISO.
Click to expand...
Now try them both RAW at 3200. The G1X has LESS noise.

Now try them both at 1600 RAW and compare the black glass bottle where the noise will be most apparent. The G1X has even less noise again.

What this shows is that the Olympus has a lightly more aggressive Noise Reduction and sharpening effect applied when taking JPEG images. If I want to sharpen and de-noise a picture further, I can do it in post-processing later via Photoshop.

The E-PL1 rated close to "POOR" in terms of performance.

We don't know how the G1X will score with DPreview until the review has been completed and the conclusions printed but we DO know how the E-PL1 fared because the following Negative comments were made about this camera on this website after testing:

The kicker amongst the gems in the Review here for the E-PL1 is the mention that the build was considered to be of poor quality (as was the performance) and that the Preview image brightness doesn't always match the captured image brightness... now that's IMPORTANT because it means you can't be assured (reliably) of the results until well after you've taken your shot with this camera. A low resolution screen that's hard to read is also important because these things all limit your results.
bigpigbig said:
My big question is: have we gotten NOWHERE with IQ in this mid-size camera in TWO YEARS? I was so excited until I saw this.
Click to expand...
IQ has advanced considerably in the last few years. Image Quality is THE main benefit of using the G1X.

First up, the Olympus E-PL1 is from the Olympus's Micro-Four Thirds camera range. which means it's a DSLR. You can't compare a DSLR with the G1X because it's a Compact Digital Camera... it's not a DSLR like the E-PL1.

Second, when it came to early comparisons at JPEG, the G1X outperformed even the DSLRs like the 7D and the 60D in high ISO JPEG images. In fact the results looked BETTER than those taken with the 1D-MkIV and the 5Dmk II:





Remember now, this is NOT a DSLR but a compact fixed-lens camera.

The benefits of Canon's ergonomically designed bodies (with the odd hiccup amongst releases as they experiment), intuitive and easy to navigate Canon menus, faithful (or at the very least, fairly accurate) colors outweighs other brands for me. And finally, few other brands definitely understand lens design as well as Canon do.

I'd happily jump ship. If there were something else out there. The Sony NEX series produce some nice results but they're still a form of DSLR and have the disadvantage of not producing a "do it all lens" (with, arguably, the same range and image quality of the G1X). They also require a decent series of lenses which you'll have to research and source. The benefits of a Full Frame sensor would exceed the benefits of the NEX.

The Canon G1X is (at the moment) the first Compact Digital camera to produce images on par with a decent DSLR with half-decent glass on it since the days of the highly regarded, yet now ancient, Canon Pro1. The Image quality of the G1X is said to be unsurpassed (at the moment) on this class of compact camera although people are just getting their hands on it now so it might take a short while to see what others can do with it.

The problem so far is that too many reviewers of camera that pick it up and handle it don't know what to make of it and, under their own admission, they have no idea how it works which suggests that the smug little $#&@'s didn't even bother to read the manual or look at Canon's prerelease before "reviewing" it. Then you have to mom-&-pop buyers who'll ask for "the best image quality in a compact camera" and they'll walk out the door with one and wonder why the more experienced users seem to take better shots with it. They'll probably only leave it on Automatic for the life of the device which is sad and unworthy of such a camera.

--
Regards,

Marco Nero.
http://www.pbase.com/nero_design/powershot_pro1

 
Maximum aperture is not synonymous with quality. No worse than the kit lens? The detail it produces is on par with L lenses.
 
Marco..what I don't get is why others can't see it as clearly as you do. thx for your clear post.
Marco Nero said:
bigpigbig said:
Price is $799.
Click to expand...
Seems reasonable to me at that price. Not everyone feels that way, of course.
Marco Nero said:
I realize that many new "features" have been introduced, but I care mostly about IQ. I shoot mostly in Manual mode.
Click to expand...
Hence the G1X would be an ideal alternative. If you shoot in manual, you'll not only appreciate the benefits of a camera like this, but you will appreciate the better layout and interface for the controls. Even DPreview found during their reviews that the E-PL1 was an underachiever when it came to "ease of use".
Marco Nero said:
For the same price, my Olympus came with a 14-42 f3.5-5.6 (28-84mm eqiv.) and I bought a Panny 20mm f1.7. $800 all in.
Click to expand...
Now you can enjoy the fine art of lens swapping whenever you want to take a photograph. If I want a DSLR, I'll buy a Full Frame DSLR like the 5D MKXX. If I want to compromise on light, lenses and capabilities, I'll buy a cropped APS-C sized sensor.
Marco Nero said:
Two years later and Canon offers us this. The IQ should blow me away.
Well...I went here: http://www.dpreview.com/previews/canong1x/page6.asp
Click to expand...
Marco Nero said:
I put in Fuji X100, Nikon V1, and E-PL1 against the G1X.
Click to expand...
Put your Olympus E-PL1 in and crank the ISO right up to 3200 and take a look at the embossing on the Glass Baileys bottle... now crank the ISO of the G1X up to 12,800 and compare the difference. The G1X has the better results even with much higher ISO and the E-PL1 exhibits much more noise.
Marco Nero said:
The E-PL1 blows them all away in every ISO both JPG and RAW. OK, just so I don't get bashed, maybe it doesn't blow them away, but it is as good as or better at every ISO.
Click to expand...
Now try them both RAW at 3200. The G1X has LESS noise.

Now try them both at 1600 RAW and compare the black glass bottle where the noise will be most apparent. The G1X has even less noise again.

What this shows is that the Olympus has a lightly more aggressive Noise Reduction and sharpening effect applied when taking JPEG images. If I want to sharpen and de-noise a picture further, I can do it in post-processing later via Photoshop.

The E-PL1 rated close to "POOR" in terms of performance.

We don't know how the G1X will score with DPreview until the review has been completed and the conclusions printed but we DO know how the E-PL1 fared because the following Negative comments were made about this camera on this website after testing:

The kicker amongst the gems in the Review here for the E-PL1 is the mention that the build was considered to be of poor quality (as was the performance) and that the Preview image brightness doesn't always match the captured image brightness... now that's IMPORTANT because it means you can't be assured (reliably) of the results until well after you've taken your shot with this camera. A low resolution screen that's hard to read is also important because these things all limit your results.
Marco Nero said:
My big question is: have we gotten NOWHERE with IQ in this mid-size camera in TWO YEARS? I was so excited until I saw this.
Click to expand...
IQ has advanced considerably in the last few years. Image Quality is THE main benefit of using the G1X.

First up, the Olympus E-PL1 is from the Olympus's Micro-Four Thirds camera range. which means it's a DSLR. You can't compare a DSLR with the G1X because it's a Compact Digital Camera... it's not a DSLR like the E-PL1.

Second, when it came to early comparisons at JPEG, the G1X outperformed even the DSLRs like the 7D and the 60D in high ISO JPEG images. In fact the results looked BETTER than those taken with the 1D-MkIV and the 5Dmk II:





Remember now, this is NOT a DSLR but a compact fixed-lens camera.

The benefits of Canon's ergonomically designed bodies (with the odd hiccup amongst releases as they experiment), intuitive and easy to navigate Canon menus, faithful (or at the very least, fairly accurate) colors outweighs other brands for me. And finally, few other brands definitely understand lens design as well as Canon do.

I'd happily jump ship. If there were something else out there. The Sony NEX series produce some nice results but they're still a form of DSLR and have the disadvantage of not producing a "do it all lens" (with, arguably, the same range and image quality of the G1X). They also require a decent series of lenses which you'll have to research and source. The benefits of a Full Frame sensor would exceed the benefits of the NEX.

The Canon G1X is (at the moment) the first Compact Digital camera to produce images on par with a decent DSLR with half-decent glass on it since the days of the highly regarded, yet now ancient, Canon Pro1. The Image quality of the G1X is said to be unsurpassed (at the moment) on this class of compact camera although people are just getting their hands on it now so it might take a short while to see what others can do with it.

The problem so far is that too many reviewers of camera that pick it up and handle it don't know what to make of it and, under their own admission, they have no idea how it works which suggests that the smug little $#&@'s didn't even bother to read the manual or look at Canon's prerelease before "reviewing" it. Then you have to mom-&-pop buyers who'll ask for "the best image quality in a compact camera" and they'll walk out the door with one and wonder why the more experienced users seem to take better shots with it. They'll probably only leave it on Automatic for the life of the device which is sad and unworthy of such a camera.

--
Regards,

Marco Nero.
http://www.pbase.com/nero_design/powershot_pro1

Click to expand...
 
howardroark said:
Maximum aperture is not synonymous with quality. No worse than the kit lens? The detail it produces is on par with L lenses.
Click to expand...
Sure it is. If I can use a 2.0 lens at ISO 800 but have to step up to 1600, 3200, or 6400 at f/4 or f/5.6 the sensor noise will kill me.

And there's no way in hell the G1X "kit lens" will rival my 24-70 f/2.8L lens, even on the ancient 5d mki it's welded to. There's purple chromatic aberration on the G1X zoomed RAWs, even in the samples dpreview provided.
 
--so was that Sony rumour just that...and no more ???
 
It may be related to final output quality, but the f-stop is much, much more complicated than even you are making it out to be. I was referring to the ability of a lens to resolve detail. You are referring to light transmission. BUT, even your argument regarding light transmission is an incomplete argument. Since most lenses are designed to have a sweet spot (as far as actual sharpness, a.k.a. detail resolution) between f/5.6 and f/8 you may be narrowing your depth of field and allowing for use of lower ISO at f/2, but you're also limiting the sharpness of your image.

The aperture does a few things: controls light transimission, effects bokeh, diffracts light (especially noticeable on most cameras above f/11), and controls depth of field as a secondary effect of controlling light transmission. The glass in the lens has the most substantial effect on detail resolution when not being limited by a very wide or a very narrow aperture.

To link the quality of a lens only to its maximum aperture is narrow minded to say the least. It may have extreme importance to some, which means those effects it has are weighed more greatly when considering lens quality, but to ignore the other properties of the lens is just plain dumb.
 
Is the G1X the best that Canon can do? No, I'd say that right now the 1DX is the best that Canon can do. However, my expectation is that the G1X will be the best ever Canon G series and they have been a great line of cameras. Backpacking up in the Sierras last fall I saw more hikers with G cameras than with all the others combined.

I would be surprised if any current, quality digital camera didn't produce quality digital images. And there are many different camera philosophies or styles to choose from. I really have enjoyed my G cameras for all the ways they are not like my DSLRs. I don't want the G to have interchangeable lenses because I have more DSLR lenses than I can keep track of. The current range of mirrorless cameras don't interest me because none of them have lenses that can compare with the 100L macro, or the 100-400 zoom, or the TSEs or other specialized lenses that I mostly can't afford or don't need. If mirrorless does it for you, thats great, but please Canon, don't mess with the successful G philosophy.

As to the $800 price tag that so many seem to complain about. Canon has announced an f2.8 28 mm IS lens to be available in June for $800. And you have to buy the accessory camera just to get it to take pictures. Sure I'd like the price to be $600 but I'd also like the stock market to be over 15,000 too. Either its worth it to you or not, that's your choice but you don't get to set the prices, those are the rules of the game. The current price is MSRP which will drift down over time but the prices of camera gear are generally going up. We can complain but we can't change it.

For the rest of my rant, just attach Marco's. I think he pretty much nailed it. Cheers.
 
While I totally agree with your sweet-spot argument, many higher-end lenses are pretty sharp at 2.8, and that comes into play whether you do a lot of low light photography, DOF, and whether you want to use a flash or not. But in the end you are giving up a lot of low-light potential if you trade it off for a lens that's at 3.5 at the lowest zoom--and nowhere near portrait range. And if you want higher aperture value use out of it, you need a DSLR-sized flash... and probably a DSLR at that point. In other words I prefer to have it there and would have traded some of the lens's zoom reach for it.
 
The way this camera is designed makes getting those huge apertures very difficult. And if they lost some zoom in exchange for a larger maximum aperture they may gain you as a customer, but they'd probably lose 20 other people who actually do want some zoom. There are plenty of options for prime point and shoots out there, but I'd imagine very few people are in the market for one.

I think this is the only review I've seen that shows any detail resolution tests.
http://www.photoreview.com.au/reviews/advanced/canon-powershot-g1x.aspx

I'm not sure how reliable those numbers are, but if they're correct then the detail this camera is capable of is remarkable.
 
Marco Nero said:
The problem so far is that too many reviewers of camera that pick it up and handle it don't know what to make of it and, under their own admission, they have no idea how it works which suggests that the smug little $#&@'s didn't even bother to read the manual or look at Canon's prerelease before "reviewing" it.
Regards,

Marco Nero.
http://www.pbase.com/nero_design/powershot_pro1

Click to expand...
 
I think he's referring to all of the reviews posted for discussion in these forums. And based on some of the asinine things said in those reviews it's pretty obvious that they were missing some information they should have known. Whether someone is blabbering on video or blabbering on their keyboard, if they don't know some of the basics of the camera their reputation is quickly diminished. If there are no tests to back up their claims, the review is even more questionable. I've read plenty of magazine, newspaper, and web reviews that were little more than glorified user first impressions that you'd see on Amazon.
 
Nothing difficult. Nothing complicated at all.....

If you know how to use any previous Canon G or current G12 the learning curve isn't much at all....so his comments are .....
 
Exactly, it is simple, which makes not knowing the macro distance is 20cm at wide angle and even further zoomed in unforgiveable. "I can't get the darn thing to focus zoomed all the way in standing two feet from my subject....what a piece of garbage this camera is." That's a paraphrased quote, but when digitalrev did their video review they popped in on someone with zero qualifications and that was essentially his comment. There have been plenty of other equally uninformed comments.
 
That is one of the significant negatives of the camera that has come up repeatedly. So...having to deal with it is an annoying and limiting problem as has been pointed out by many...
 
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