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My first digital camera, purchased in September 2001. |
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Walking through the fountain (click to enlarge) |
With evenings free and summer bringing a late sunset, I had the opportunity in the evenings to walk to restaurants, visit the famous Pike Place Market and and explore the waterfront. This would be a good time to try out the G1 and make some images. Additionally, we stayed for a couple of days after our work ended and took a trip to visit Mt. St. Helens.
Whenever I traveled for business I always tried to either arrive a day or two early or stay a day or two late and explore the area. Of course, I always had a camera and a couple of lenses with me. I've included a few of the images from that trip 15 years ago.
At the time, I was rather impressed with the results of my digital experiment and it wasn't long after that I purchased my first digital camera, a Canon G2. That was a boost to 4mp, which at the time, was close to state of the art for non-professional cameras. I wanted to ease my way into digital photography, but was not yet ready to give up my medium format and 35mm film based photography.
I should say that I was fascinated with the technology more than the absolute image quality. The images, because of lack of any film grain or digital noise (at base ISO) reminded me of medium format images. Smooth tonality, nice colors and an overall pleasant look. The instant feedback and ease of use was also very attractive to a guy who almost always used manual focus, manual exposure, etc. But, I did find it somewhat satisfying as I had never had the opportunity to see instant results.
For example, the 4mp is very outdated as is its 1.8" LCD. The ISO only went to 400 and the top shutter speed was only 1/1000th sec. But the lens had auto as well as manual focus and one could photograph in manual, program, aperture and shutter priority. Amazingly, the camera came standard with a wireless remote control and a 32mb compact flash card! The G2 was a remarkably good consumer camera for mid-2001.
- 4-megapixel CCD delivering image resolutions as high as 2,272 x 1,704 pixels. (3.87 megapixels effective)
- Real-image optical viewfinder and 1.8-inch, color LCD monitor with swivel design.
- 3x optical zoom, 7-21mm lens (equivalent to a 34-102mm lens on a 35mm camera) with auto and manual focus.
- Three user-selectable focus points.
- Digital telephoto as high as 3.6x.
- Full Automatic, Program AE, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, and Manual exposure modes, as well as four preset exposure modes.
- Manually adjustable aperture settings from f/2 to f/8, depending on zoom setting.
- Manually adjustable shutter speed settings from 1/1,000 to 15 seconds.
- Variable light sensitivity: Auto, 50, 100, 200, or 400 ISO equivalents.
- Center-Weighted Average and Spot metering modes, with an adjustable Spot area.
- White Balance adjustment with eight settings.
- Built-in flash with five operating modes.
- External flash hot shoe.
- Continuous Shooting, Stitch-Assist, Auto Exposure Bracketing, and Movie recording modes.
- Contrast, Sharpness, and Saturation adjustment.
- Vivid Color, Normal Color, B&W, and Sepia options.
- Remote control and utilities for operating the camera from a computer.
- JPEG and RAW still image file formats, movies saved as AVI / Motion JPEGs.
- Images saved to CompactFlash Type I or II memory cards, 32MB card included.
- DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) compatibility.
- USB cable for high-speed connection to a computer.
- Canon Digital Camera 6.0 software included.
- Powered by Canon BP-511 rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack, with AC adapter included.
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Buying clothes (click to enlarge) |
Body Improvements/Differences | gray metal cover | |
Startup screen, startup sound | ||
Maximum Resolution | ||
Resolution Settings | Medium1: 1600 x 1200 Medium2: 1024 x 768 Small: 640 x 480 | Medium: 1024 x 768 Small: 640 x 480 |
Filtration | ||
Signal processing speed | ||
Noise reduction | ||
Battery Life | 1000 images/LCD off 300 minutes/Playback | 800 images/LCD off 160 minutes/Playback |
Focusing Points | ||
Manual Focus | ||
Metering Modes | ||
Manual exposure mode improvements | ||
White Balance Modes | ||
Program Shift | ||
Color Effects Mode | ||
Movie Mode | 160 x 120 — 120 sec. | |
Continuous Shooting Speeds | Continuous: 1.5 fps | |
Startup time, shutter lag, etc. | ||
Interval between frames in Single frame mode | ||
Slow shutter speed range | ||
High shutter speed and aperture combinations | 1/800 — f/3.5~f/5.0 to f/8 1/1000 — f/8 only | f/8 only |
Digital zoom function | ||
Histogram display in Playback mode | ||
Image magnification during playback | ||
Image erase modes | ||
RemoteCapture functions | ||
USB Mounter for Mac OS 9.0 ~ 9.1 | ||
Direct Print mode with CP-10 | ||
Cropping in Direct Print mode | ||
Accessory Compatibility | ||
Supplied CF Card |
This statement from Image-Resource.com is telling.
"At less than $900, the PowerShot G2 is sure to be a hit with professionals, corporate users, advanced amateurs, and even beginning photographers who want a high-quality camera they can grow into."
Yep, $900! That is in the same range as the current 20mp Sonys, Nikons and Canons.
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Falling over (click to enlarge) |
Thanks for looking. Enjoy!
Dennis A. Mook
All content on this blog is © 2013-2016 Dennis A. Mook. All Rights Reserved. Feel free to point to this blog from your website with full attribution. Permission may be granted for commercial use. Please contact Mr. Mook to discuss permission to reproduce the blog posts and/or images.
Dennis--
ReplyDeleteAs it happens, my first camera was the next Canon PowerShot, the G3, which I got in 2003. I still like the quality of the successful shots. As you put it, "Smooth tonality, nice colors and an overall pleasant look." The limitation was not image quality but ability to get images when light was low or the opportunity fleeting. It took too long to wake up from off or sleep. Anything above the base ISO of 100 was too noisy to be worth taking. And when the situation was fast changing (tricky light and focus), the camera took too long after I'd pressed the shutter button to take the picture, yielding, for instance, shots of blank sky where a flock of birds had flown by, or the sidewalk at my feet after I'd lowered the camera in frustration. But on the whole a pleasant memory, since for the first time I could process and print color images myself. Thanks for stirring the memory!
Walt
(namerof@uky.edu)
Walt, I can appreciate your comment. Things were even worse with the G2. Slow, slow and even slower, but the novelty of digital photography got a good foothold in my experience and generated some excitement about what could be in the future. As we all now know, digital swept the photographic world.
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