Canon An Ode to the Canon G7

Archiver

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In the wild and wooly days of 2007, I already had a few compacts on my belt, including the Canon S45, the S70, the Fuji F30 and the Casio Z750. But the camera that was the gateway drug to bigger things was the G7.

I'd been shooting with the S70 and F30 for some time, and I loved the S70's colours. In those days I only shot in standard jpeg, never raw, and barely even did any postprocessing. How things have changed. But I get ahead of myself.

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S70 - Yue Hwa by Archiver, on Flickr

The G7 was an excited purchase, and at first I was somewhat dismayed to see it display more luminance noise at base ISO than the S70, which had almost none. The colours were not the same, and the metering made high contrast scenes blow out on a regular basis. It was the first time I'd ever thought I might take a camera back for exchange. But I looked at it, and it was as if it squeaked with a little voice, 'I'll earn my keep!' So I stuck with it. Due to the prominent exposure compensation dial, I began to experiment with EV adjustment and found that things were not as bad as they seemed. As I shot with it and played with the settings, I found that it was quite the capable little thing.

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G7 - Sunset over Southbank by Archiver, on Flickr

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G7 - The Illuminated Face by Archiver, on Flickr

One of my favourite things to do with a new camera is to put it through its paces in Melbourne's CBD, often at night. A small camera like the G7 is easy to conceal and yet feels reassuringly solid in the hand, like you're holding a 'real camera'.

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G7 - Magic Hour by Archiver, on Flickr

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G7 - Curve Bar > > > by Archiver, on Flickr

While the G7's wide end was only a 35mm equivalent, the 7x zoom was the longest I'd experienced in a camera so far, and it enabled me to take portraits with blurred backgrounds, something I'd never done before. The G7 was my primary camera on a two week trip to China, and while I would have liked to have taken my Canon 30D, the discreet and reliable G7 handled almost everything I threw at it.

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G7 - What you talkin' about? by Archiver, on Flickr

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G7 - Old and New by Archiver, on Flickr

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G7 - Songshan III by Archiver, on Flickr

There's just something comforting and fun about a solid and discreet camera that you can take anywhere and be assured of bringing home the bacon. For me, the Canon G7 was that camera for a good few years. It focused faster and more reliably than the previous Canons I had, and had a much longer zoom, to boot. Totally reliable, I could pull it from my bag and power up, shoot in an instant, and stow it away before anyone noticed. Even the Ricoh GRD III has more operational lag time than the G7. With a bit of patience you could even do rock concert photography with it.

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G7 - Three Masters by Archiver, on Flickr

The G7 was what moved me from pocketable cameras to DSLR's, and what also drew me back to smaller cameras and into rangefinders. After all, the G7 and the later G10 were styled like the rangefinders of old. My G7 has since been passed to my family, but I still have very fond memories of slipping through the city at night, light and free, capturing sights that only I could see and bringing them home to enjoy at my leisure.
 
The G7 introduced a new, flashier body style to the "G line", breathing new life into it. Really nice looking camera.

Only downside I experienced: Canon inexplicably dropped RAW capability, which had been a hallmark of the G's since the very beginning. Happily, they restored it for the G9, which quickly replaced the G7 as my primary P&S at the time.
 
Nice write-up about a classic if somewhat controversial serious compact. Not only did the G7 lose raw capability but it also signalled an end to the f/2 lens and the articulated screen. The former was only just restored (and even slightly surpassed) by the G15, and the latter made a comeback in the G11 but disappeared again with the G15!

The G7 actually predates my G-series experience, with my first being the G10 which was followed later by the G11. About a year ago I took a trip back in time and tried out a G9 for a while when one came up at a good price, and finally now I have the G1X. As much as I enjoyed the solid build and controls of the later G-series cameras, my standard of comparison for IQ were the contemporary Canon DSLRs. The G10 and G11 also came at a similar time as smaller mirrorless ILCs were just taking off which meant that I never used them extensively. It finally took the G1X for the G-series to really strike a chord with me.
 
The G7 was actually a great follow up to the old S series. I had an S50 and loved it. A G without the f/2 lens and without RAW was a scary thing. It took Ricoh and Panasonic to force Canon back into keeping their compacts serious!
 
I loved the s50 -- it taught me how to take photos. When it died I bought a second hand g5 and I still occasionally shoot with it. Never met anyone who didn't like the g5.
So +1 for cameras with a g
 
I've always regretted selling my G11 a couple of years back. But only the G1X has tempted me, since. I would buy another G11, I think, but not a 12, 15 or 16.

The G11's successor was the G1X, rather than the small sensor 12, 15 and 16. The styling of the G11 went into the G1X, and the small sensor G's reverted to a more compact G7/9 style body. The big jump between the earlier G's and the 15/16 is the lens aperture. F1.8-2.8 rather than f2.8 to some crazy high number. If it was 2007 again and the G16 was out, man, I would have loved that! But the G7 certainly earned his keep, that's for sure.

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