Canon PowerShot G1 X Announced / Previewed

[ceremus]

Preview
Hands-On

Anyone watching the emergence of mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras will have spent much of the last year patiently waiting for Canon and Nikon to show their hands. Nikon clearly decided such cameras didn't need large sensors, and now it appears Canon has concluded they don't need interchangeable lenses. Both these moves make sense for companies wanting dedicated photographers to keep buying DSLRs, but Canon's approach is likely to be of more interest to those enthusiasts...

This is an interesting move. They more or less took their popular enthusiast P&S G12 and Frankensteined an almost-APS-C sensor into it. It's slightly larger but very close in size to the Four Thirds sensor, and positively dwarfs Nikon's new CX sensor. So you've got a point and shoot that packs quite a lot of punch without going full DSLR. It should have quite a lot of ISO capability, at least largely improved over most P&S cameras, and I would think more flexibility over depth-of-field as well. Personally I don't like that the dedicated ISO dial has gone away in favor of making room for the pop-up flash, but I guess something there had to give.

I think this would be a good option for the folks that want a straight up "upgrade" to their P&S cameras, but don't necessarily want to get involved in buying an assortment of lenses that comes with buying a DSLR and even the MILCs. The sort of customers who would ordinarily buy a DSLR with the kit lens and leave it perpetually attached.

[Rentham]

Very tempting, but still most likely going to end up with an x100 for a travel camera.

[inkista]

Damnit. Looks like it's the Panny G3 or a Fuji X-Pro 1 for me. I was so hoping...

If it had been f/2, and if it wasn't using the old crappy G-series optical viewfinder (god, I hate that thing on my G9), I might have thought about it. At least they got the sensor size right. But this definitely takes the wind out of the X10's sails.

[gturner]

WTF do they all name their cameras the same or close to it??
G1X, XPro, GX1


Looks pretty interesting. I have long been thinking of selling one of my DSLR bodies and replacing it with a small quality camera. This however looks a little too big to small enough to do that.