Canon G9 , the Yashica GSN version of the M8?

[xayraa33]

Compact 12 MP zoom finder digital camera that shoots in RAW.
anyone seen one of these?
if so, what do you think of it?

 

[PaulDalex]

I am against the G9. Trash it. They used the sRGB color space. I was thinking to start a thread on color workflow but I cannot afford the time. The topic: uniform color space through the workflow. Subtitle: how they deceive you. It turns out that photo inkjets in certain areas EXCEED Adobe RGB. So sRGB should not appear in serious photography (they who say the contrary on the net are hopelessy wrong). Next guess how much is a video monitor capable of Adobe RGB?
Well if you don't care for the best go for the G9

 

[Pherdinand]

i don't get it Pistach... If it can shoot RAW then there's no colour space involved.

But i don't know that camera.
GSN version of M8? Wishful thinking!
Does it have an ultra simple interface? Does it have an excellent bright finder? Does it have useable manual focus?
And most importantly maybe: DOES IT HAVE AN EXCELLENT F/1.7 LENS GLUED ON IT???

Don't compare my top class GSN to some kind of compact x-megapixel "zoom finder" digital please😀

 

[Socke]

Tried it in a shop recently, it has the looks, it has a nice solid feel but the viewfinder is crap. This from a Contax G1 and G2 user 🙂

 

[palec]

When I was ordering G7 last year, I thought the lack of RAW is serious show stopper and will be resolved in (never existed) firmware upgrade. But over the time I found out, it's the viewfinder that makes this camera poor performer and that's related to G9, too.

 

[aad]

I am against the G9. Trash it. They used the sRGB color space. I was thinking to start a thread on color workflow but I cannot afford the time. The topic: uniform color space through the workflow. Subtitle: how they deceive you. It turns out that photo inkjets in certain areas EXCEED Adobe RGB. So sRGB should not appear in serious photography (they who say the contrary on the net are hopelessy wrong). Next guess how much is a video monitor capable of Adobe RGB?
Well if you don't care for the best go for the G9

Oh, dear.

I saw an M8 review on B&H where a fellow loved the image quality and handling, but trashed the camera overall for file format.

I'm not in the market for any digicam, but I think comments like this could keep someone from getting a perfectly good camera for no reason at all.

 

[xvvvz]

>>When I was ordering G7 last year, I thought the lack of RAW is serious show stopper and will be resolved in (never existed) firmware upgrade.<<

There is a nice free 3rd party firmware that allows the G7 to do RAW and give a few more features. Just Google for it or look in the Canon forums at some place like DPReview.

 

[Graham Line]

Two professional shooters where I work are pretty happy, so far, with their G9s. They got a full page photo out of it which looks pretty decent. Not razor sharp, but it was shot from a hot air balloon and printed on newsprint . . .
They like the size, weight, and accessibility of the shutter speed and ISO controls, plus the presence of the RAW format. No one mentioned the finder, other than saying they were glad it has an optical one. I wear glasses and had no trouble seeing the entire frame.
If I can get into the newspaper site I'll add a link, otherwise search the Oregonian site for 'Destination: Yamhill County'.

ADD: Look here: http://shopping.oregonlive.com/SS/Page.aspx?&secid=33534&pagenum=1

The aerial with wine glass on the cover is a G9 shot. Reach your own conclusions.

I agree the sensor size is a limitation and the long end of the zoom could be better. On the other hand, this is less than $500, fits in a space smaller than the mythical M8 pocket, and produces reasonable results within its limits.
No, I don't see it as an M4 replacement.
Guess it depends whether one wants to shoot pictures or argue spec sheets. 🙂

 

[photogdave]

Is it a great digicam? Yes. Is it the GSN version of the M8? No.
As already mentioned, poor viewfinder, poor manual focus, SLOW lens. But the worst part - SMALL SENSOR! Even zoomed out at a 200mm equivalent you're stuck witha f/4.7 lens on that small sensor, giving you way too much DOF.
Until digicams get at least APS-C size sesnors they will never be match for DSLR or film cameras. That was the cool thing about film point-and-shoot cameras. They were all full frame! 😉

 

[PaulDalex]

When one sees i the specs color space sRGB he should get very,very suspicious. Raw data means raw (very brilliant: as they get out from sensor well not quite but almost) but RAW is not a standard and not all raw and neither all sensors, to begin with, are the same. Here some guys are careful to argue soundly. I quote:
There is a slight theoretical exception here: the RAW format isn’t a standard so there is no reason why a camera manufacturer couldn’t record different raw data based on the intended color space. (terrychay, never heard this guy before). Then when you convert to Adobe RGB the supreme law of everything comes into action : Garbidge in Garbidge out.
Got the point? Besides, I read deluded reviews and not just for the viewfinder

 

[Socke]

Colorspaces and what one can expect from them:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/sRGB-AdobeRGB1998.htm

 

[PaulDalex]

the link indicated by Socke (thanks) makes very clear my point. As you can see photo inkjets in certain areas substantially exceed Adobe RGB. Thus whatever in the chain (if the source is a digital camera it must be taken into account) goes under Adobe RGB, in this instance uses sRGB, will largely degrade the quality of the print

 

[Pherdinand]

"All of these extra colors in Adobe RGB 1998 are great to have for viewing on a computer monitor, but can we actually reproduce them in a print? It would be a shame to edit using these extra colors, only to later retract their intensity due to printer limitations."

You CANNOT enjoy viewing all those extra colors of adobe rgb on a computer moitor, since (as written a paragraph before) a computer monitor is usually approximately capable to visualize the srgb space and not more.
There are exceptions but that's not the point.
So this is quite nonsense i'd say. Or misleading at least. It makes me doubt the validity of that whole article.
Thanks for the link, anyway.

 

[palec]

>>When I was ordering G7 last year, I thought the lack of RAW is serious show stopper and will be resolved in (never existed) firmware upgrade.<<

There is a nice free 3rd party firmware that allows the G7 to do RAW and give a few more features. Just Google for it or look in the Canon forums at some place like DPReview.

Many thanks, I've found it - named CHDK.

 

[aad]

I wonder what color space my eyes are in?

Anywho, I've done the whole side-by-side test scanning film and viewing results/prints in different color spacesand can't see any darned difference. Maybe I live in an sRGB world!

 

[Socke]

I had a very long lecture about color spaces by my printer, offset not photo, and I used to earn a living with Tektronix Phaser printers back in the dark ages of Mac System 7 🙂

To make a long story short, sRGB is usualy good enough for most printing purposes and optimum for web purposes since it is understood by webbrowsers.

Acutaly, what would you expect from an 8 bit JPEG printed on a CMYK printer?

 

[Pherdinand]

i think sometimes the subject of the image is far more important to let such details like colour differences break an image. And the other way around too, many bad images will not be saved if they are processed and printed in the most suitable colour space.
But in the case where the colours and transitions are the most important - a beautiful landscape, a low-key portrait - you do habe to make sure you are not getting posterization or colour shifts when you arrive to the printing stage.
Also, in the professional pre-print work, clients expect to get the colours you show them on the preview, with proper tonality.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

But the worst part - SMALL SENSOR! Even zoomed out at a 200mm equivalent you're stuck witha f/4.7 lens on that small sensor, giving you way too much DOF.

Agreed. But you see, there are lots of people that "value" a lens' "sharpness" above all else. If you think about the average point-and-shooter, they'd want whatever it is on that frame to be "in-focus", no matter whether there's a point of interest or not.

Since the average point-and-shooters (and granted, a hearty number of "professionals") don't care about f-stops and DOF but about how "sharp" the subject in the photo is, they design these P&S to be "sharp" using the size --small-- of the sensor to their advantage.