Compact Flash Compartment

Behind a plastic lightweight compartment door is the Compact Flash slot. The G2 can take both CF Type I and II cards and is fully compatible with the 340 MB, 512 MB and 1 GB IBM Microdrive. Just like the G1 the interior of the G2's CF compartment is metal clad, perhaps designed to dissipate heat away from CF cards?

Just like the G1 the G2's CompactFlash compartment door has a sensor which it immediately shuts down the camera if it's opened, if there are images still in the cameras buffer being written to the Compact Flash card the camera will emit a loud constant tone until writing has finished.

Connections

A rubber door on the right side of the camera conceals the DC-IN connector and the now standard Canon digital I/O connector to be used with the supplied USB cable (and also for direct connection to compatible Canon printers). Just like the G1 the A/V Out connector doesn't have a cover.

I moaned about the rubber door cover on the G1 but haven't yet heard any reports of it dropping off, so I'll sit on the fence with the G2 and just say that it wouldn't have been beyond the will of the designers to put a nice spring loaded plastic door over all three connectors, instead they seem to have gone for the cheaper option.

Lens

The G2 features the exact same 7 - 21 mm (equiv. 34 - 102 mm) F2.0 - F2.5 lens. I've talked the similarity between this lens and those found on other digital cameras (Casio, Sony etc.) to death, sufficient to say Canon assure me that this lens is indeed manufactured and constructed by them.

The quality of outdoor shots and the camera's liking of blue skies leads me to believe that this lens has some special coatings, it has a visible blue coating which the G1 doesn't.

Tripod Mount

On the base of the camera is a metal tripod mount, and yet again it's not positioned in line with the lens but then again is at least far enough away from the battery compartment to make it possible to change the battery with the camera on a tripod.

Remote Control

Supplied with the camera is this handy Infrared remote control, with a 5 m range (from the front) it can be used to remotely fire the shutter release, control the zoom and other menu options or as a control for playback (say of a slideshow on a TV screen) with thumbnail, zoom and DISPLAY buttons also available.

I'm glad to see Canon considering this a standard item, it must be relatively inexpensive for them to include this capability.

Internal Flash / Focus Assist Lamp

The flash built into the G1 is rated as 0.7 to 4.5 m at Wide and 0.7 - 3.6 m at Tele, so it's relatively powerful. Below the flash is the Focus Assist Lamp which serves a double purpose, firstly it fires a beam of patterned white light in low light situations which helps the auto focus system to get a lock. Secondly when the flash an anti-red-eye are enabled it remains lit for as long as you half-press the shutter release to reduce the size of the subjects pupils and thus reduce the chance of redeye.

Just like the G1 the G2's flash can be used in continuous shooting mode, though that mode slows to one frame every 2.5 seconds (enough time for the flash to charge between shots).

Flash Hot-shoe

One advantage the G2 holds over most of the competition (at least without buying external brackets) is a full TTL hot-shoe built onto the top of the camera. This allows for full compatibility with a range of Canon Speedlite: 220EX, 380EX, 420EX, 550EX, MR-14EX Macro Lite and also non-TTL use of other flash / studio systems.

Compact Flash Card

So it's not very often I talk about the storage supplied with the digital camera, that's because most digital cameras come with just 8 or 16 MB of flash storage. Canon HAVE listened and are supplying the PowerShot G2 with a 32 MB Compact Flash Type I card.

Kudos.

Supplied In the Box

The contents of the retail box are: (may vary by region)

  • Canon PowerShot G2 Digital Camera
  • BP-511 Lithium-Ion battery
  • CA-560 AC adapter/charger (110-240V)
  • 32 MB CompactFlash card
  • WL-D100 IR Remote Control
  • Lens cap & string
  • Shoulder strap
  • USB cable
  • AV cable
  • Canon Solutions CD-ROM
    • USB / TWAIN driver
    • Remote Capture
    • Photo Stitch
    • Zoom Browser
    • Adobe Photoshop 5.0LE
  • User Manual *

* Kudos to Canon for delivering an excellently authored, easy to understand yet totally comprehensive manual.