I’m going to cover this section more than I typically would when reviewing a camera. This is because the G9’s killer feature is not the specs that you see listed above – there are plenty of compacts out there with 12MP, 6x + zooms or RAW. Far more so, what sets the G9 apart is its ergonomics and the accessibility that its controls provide.

You see, what almost compact cameras lack is the handling that allows the gear to “get out of the way” and let the photographer concentrate on just taking great images. Many cameras feature manual controls but almost all require you to change aperture, ISO and exposure through a menu system on the LCD. To date, this ranks as one of my biggest weaknesses when comparing compact cameras to their larger DSLR cousins or making a recommendation to someone when I’m asked for advice on what to buy (dynamic range / high ISO and lens choices being the other two). The G9 however is an entirely different animal. Instead of having to rely on the menu system for everything, there are external, analogue controls which allow you to quickly change:

-    ISO (through a dedicated dial on the top)
-    Aperture (through a circular dial on the back)
-    Exposure compensation (through a single button press followed by the same circular dial)

This means that you can shoot freely in aperture mode (as 90% everyone should almost all of the time) with access to the three parameters that you will need to have access to the most frequently. The same controls are reusable for shutter priority and with this system even manual mode becomes usable. This benefit of having the flexibility to quickly change settings is huge. Even previous versions of the G line did not have this implemented this well.

The difference this makes in the real world is very significant and far more important than minor benefits of say, start up time. It’s somewhat ironic when I read extensive timing tests done with compact cameras which compare milliseconds of difference in AF speed or start up time between models or brands. To illustrate my point, lets take a common shooting scenario…

Lets say you’re walking through a beautiful town on vacation and have your camera in your hand. A strikingly beautiful street scene starts to unfold in front of you, one that summarises the entire location for you and you know you need to capture it. You turn on your camera and as is often the case, the settings on the camera aren’t exactly what you need so you have to make some modifications. With sample camera A (the rest of the compact camera market), the following might be required before you can capture your magic moment.

1. Turn on the camera. Start up time. Lets say its fast and give it 1s.
2. We’ll assume you’re already in Aperture mode but it’s late afternoon and a little darker than normal and you need the extra shutter speed. So you increase the ISO. You do this by clicking MENU, scrolling to ISO, selecting and then changing from 100 to 200 and accept. You’re quick and nimble at this so it only takes 3 seconds
3. You’re familiar with cameras and you know that you have plenty of depth of field to work with. However, you were taking a landscape shot 5 mins ago so now need to change from f/8 to f/2.8 to get the fastest shutter speed possible. You go back to the shortcut menu, and start cycling through apertures. Again, you’re quick and don’t delay. so it only takes 2s this time
4. Finally, you’ve got a well trained eye and you know this scene needs a little exposure compensation as the all the shadows in the shot are going to fool the meter and cause it to overexpose. So you go back to the shortcut menu and modify exposure compensation to -0.7. Again, another 2s.
5. Finally, you’re ready to take your shot. Your camera AF’s. Fortunately its best in its class and this takes 0.4s.
6. Then you hit fully depress the shutter button and you take your picture. Shutter lag is present but again, your best in class camera ensures that its only a fraction of a second you’re losing here.

Did you get your shot in time? Who knows – but what I can say is that in the 10 seconds it took to take the above picture, about 80% of the time would have been the camera waiting for you rather than the other way around. This is a consequence of using digital / menu controls for the most important functions and is the reason for compact photographers missing countless would-be great shots every day. I know that in many cases, people actually stop changing the manual controls because they end up losing too much time and just go with a standard setting they hope covers all.

So, still continuing with the above example, how would the G9 have done?

While it has a decent startup time, lag and so on, it’s not class leading. However, as we can see here – only 20% of the time was spent on these areas. Where the G9 makes a difference is on the time consuming steps 2 – 4; the camera settings. Because of the analogue controls, you can now change ISO, aperture and exposure compensation in easily less than half the time it would take on a regular compact camera using a menu system. That’s a huge difference, even if you only even change one and even then only every now and then. And because it’s easy, you’re more likely to do it more often. And this means better pictures more often.

Two examples of photos that fell into that category for me in the past few days are below. Add a few seconds to the setting up of the camera and I would have definitely have missed these (or I would have had the wrong settings resulting in an image with less impact). The first is of a mosque in Arab Street in Singapore. A break in the clouds appeared directly behind the mosque for a few seconds when I happened to be looking upwards. Knowing I need to keep the clouds well exposed and that a silhouetted building would work, I set to underexpose. The second image is just a snapshot but at full zoom, I needed a good enough shutter speed to keep the lens stable and that means changing the ISO rapidly while the cat was still hissing away.

Challengers of this analysis may argue that the above only applies to supposedly “advanced” photographers. Personally I’d argue that shooting in aperture mode and modifying ISO to get faster shutter speed is something anyone with a camera should be capable of doing but that’s not the issue anyway – the point here is that the G9 is marketed as an advanced compact camera. It is in this capacity, with its analogue controls, that it lives up to its promise and it does it in a way that no empirical test or spec sheet will ever show. It instead delivers it in the only truly important way – with real world images.

Performance and Timings

I’ll skim through this section as it’s been covered very well in other reviews.

Anyway, overall the camera is medium / fast for a compact. It’s definitely not the fastest in its class but it’s decent. Start up time is OK, AF speed is above average and certainly very accurate. I didn’t have a very difficult time locking on moving subjects so long as the contrast was sufficient. Detecting static objects in low light was very good. However,  like all compact cameras you will obviously be able to surpass the capabilities of the AF system if you put it in very challenging environments. That’s a fact of life unfortunately and I instead encourage people to develop their own technique (some pointers here) than worry about this too much.

Shot to shot speed was average. Again, timings for those inclined to read more about this are available in many other places.