Professional control for consumers, a great companion for professionals.

Photography is one of my few serious hobbies. Late last year, I bought myself the newest Semi-Professional SLR Canon had to offer -- the EOS 40D. The 40D has traveled almost everywhere with me around the city since then, but it felt like a couple things were missing. I can't take my 40D everywhere. It's a large camera and I need to bring around a separate bag of equipment with it. What I needed was a camera that offered top notch picture quality that I could truly bring anywhere, keep in my bag wherever I go. After doing some research, I learned that the G9, [released roughly at the same time as the 40D,] filled this void perfectly.

I'm surprised that the G9 doesn't bear the "EOS" name. The G9's construction is among some of the toughest I've seen in a compact camera. Magnesium metal casing, tempered glass screen, it's built like a tank. I've had the G9 for nearly a year now, and I can't say I see a scratch anywhere on the entire camera. Put side by side with my 40D, they look like they were made for each other with their similar styling. [It's my firm belief that cameras should be black and have textured surface to grip on to.] Its design also gives off a retro feel that this camera has history and experience. Canon even says that the G9 was based off of old Rangefinder cameras. The G9 looks professional grade, which is something we're not typically used to since we're dealing with a point-and-shoot compact camera.

But it doesn't just look professional grade, it is professional grade. Canon actually managed to squeeze most of the features that larger cameras have into a tiny package. It has a flash shoe, it has full manual controls, it can take adapter lenses, it can go to ISO3200, it can shoot RAW, it can shoot video and time lapse, it has DiGIC III, it has a built in ND filter option, it has a control wheel, it even has a viewfinder [something disappearing from so many cameras these days.] It even has integrated post-processing tool to correct your photos and a special shooting mode that assists you to create perfect panoramic photos. It's all of these reasons why I actually got the G9 to go with my 40D -- aside from the size difference, it does so many of the same things my 40D does, and even some things it doesn't do.

The menu system for the G9 is pretty standard Canon PowerShot layout. If you've ever used a PowerShot before, you know what to expect here. Preferences are organized well and easy to quickly flip through [thanks to the G9's awesome scroll-wheel.] When shooting, things really start to feel a bit like you're using an SLR camera because the scroll-wheel changes primary shooting parameters like shutter speed and aperture. I'm a manual-mode kind of guy, so it's interesting to note that the camera shows you in real-time what the exposure of the shot will look like as you adjust settings. Ive never had the exposure preview give me a wrong reading, resulting in more photos taken right the first time more often. The G9 is easily the brightest example of Manual controls done right on a compact camera.

The 3-inch screen which dominates the back of the camera is vibrant and bright. Its bright enough to be seen in broad daylight, and offers wide enough viewing angles that all your friends can look in on a shot after it was taken. The screen is also covered with tempered glass, meaning it's resilient against scratches. I'd place the screens quality directly on par with my 40D.

The photo quality offered by this camera is among the best I've seen, considering it has a compact-sized CCD sensor. The photos don't compare to my 40D, but they are still very impressive. Small sensors capture higher noise levels in their photos by the nature of their design. While the G9 handles noise admirably, it still exists even at ISO 80. Many other compact cameras appear not to have low-ISO noise issues, but there's a key difference between other point and shoots and the G9. The G9 does not implement any noise reduction [or uses a minimal amount] at RAW or High Quality JPEG. Without the noise reduction, the photos have noise, but the details also appear sharper. You've seen it before -- other compact cameras can tend to look muddy or blurry when you view the photo at full size. You don't see any noise, but it looks blurry. This is the Noise Reduction at work on those cameras. Even if the noise appears to be a problem when viewed at full size, the G9 takes photos large enough that when printed or viewed reduced on a screen, the noise tends to disappear.

The lens on the G9 is not the best I've seen on a compact camera, but it still performs better than most. The lens is relatively fast at ƒ/2.8 and can stop down to a relatively slow ƒ/8.0. The camera suffers from no vignetting around the edges to speak of. It gets some chromatic aberration at ƒ/2.8, but this disappears when stopped down. The sharpness of the lens is on-par with some of my 40D's lenses, which is no small feat on a compact camera. The lens zooms quickly and features an above-average 6x magnification. For shooting in bright outdoor situations, the lens has a built in ND [neutral density] filter that can be toggled to cover the diaphragm. The ND filter darkens the image by a full stop, allowing you to return back to average shooting speeds for optimal image quality. For lower light conditions, the lens also offers a gyroscopic image stabilizer which can help keep your photos steady even while shooting at 1/4 second. In practice, the image stabilization works well. My suggestion is to enable the option "Only enable Image Stabilization when I press the shutter" -- this will save batter power. The camera features manual focusing which also uses the scroll-wheel to control. When activated, a magnified square appears in the center of the screen allowing you to get a better view of your subjects sharpness. The manual focus is great for doing macro photography and ultra-close-up photography. The focal range covers from infinity all the way to about 1.5cm away from the lens.

The battery life is about average. You can take several hundred shots with typical zooming, focusing, and flash usage. Better mileage can be had if you use lower flash power and no image stabilization. It uses the same Li-ion batteries as Canon's Digital Rebel SLR's, so spare batteries are easy to find and not very expensive.

The PowerShot G9 can be found online for an average price of about $435. If you can get past that initial cost, there's a lot to like about the G9. It's rugged, compact body will last no matter where you take it, and its excellent photo quality ensures you won't miss any of those moments either. Its manual controls means you can be creative how you want, and its ability to use an external flash and converter lenses means there's expandability to increase its usefulness.

If you're a professional, this is the camera to own when you can't take your larger SLR camera around with you. For consumers, be prepared to taste what its like to have features similar to those SLR cameras.