In Playback mode you can get all the picture information by pressing the DISPLAY button. As you can see it is very complete and includes folder and image number, ISO sensitivity, exposure mode, shutter speed, aperture, exposure compensation, white balance, focus mode, image size and quality, date and time.

To examine the picture for critical focusing or detail you can use the zoomed playback feature to enlarge the image 2.5x or ...

5x times ... Once magnified you can freely scroll around inside the picture using the 4-way jog switch.

The Multi Replay mode brings up the usual 9-thumbnail screen where you can quickly select an image to be displayed full screen.

The JUMP function allows you to quickly go forward or backward nine images at a time and can also be used in single image playback.

While viewing a picture you can press the "star" button on the back to quickly delete it.

The Play mode menu with obvious options for Single Erase, Erase All and Protect, the Rotate option lets you re-orient a portrait mode image for proper display on a TV or computer screen. The Slide Show option lets you select an interval time between images and and start and stop a presentation. The Print Order option lets you embed DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) information on the card so any selected pictures can be easily printed by DPOF-compliant printers or services.

The Setup menu is the same as was already described on the previous page of this review.

Steve's Conclusion

The Pro 70 is an odd-shaped rangefinder camera that resembles an SLR, the PowerShot G1 looks and feels more like a conventional 35mm camera. As with the Pro 70, the exterior fit and finish of the G1 is excellent and highly durable thanks to mostly metal construction. It is not a light camera, you definitely get the feeling that you're holding something of substance when you have it in your hand. This is not to say that it is a "tank," but don't expect it to be as light as some of the other cameras that are made from mostly plastic.

The first thing that catches your eye is the swiveling color LCD on the back. Most cameras have a color LCD but it's usually set at a fixed angle and requires the camera to be tilted around to use it. The PowerShot G1 has an independantly swiveling color LCD display like those found on many camcorders. It gives you the flexibility to get shots that you might not otherwise be able to capture. Hold it over your head with the LCD tilted downwards for a crowd shot or tilt the LCD up and hold it near the floor to give you the same perspective as the family dog. You can even turn the LCD to face forwards for framing self-portrait shots. The color LCD is also highly useable in the bright light outdoors which is very useful when doing macros or using add-on lenses.

Seems that everyone is looking to pack more storage capability into their digicams now that we are capturing 3-megapixel images. CompactFlash is the way to go with the Type I cards up to 256MB and Type II up to one gigabyte thanks to the new IBM Microdrive. Canon wisely chose to put a CF Type II card slot on the G1 and it is fully Microdrive compatible. It operated both my 340MB and 1GB Microdrives without a problem. There are also solid state high-capacity flash memory options like the new SanDisk 300MB CF2 card or the Delkin 224MB CF2 and these do use less power than the Microdrives but these cards are expensive. Other manufacturers are avoiding using the Type II slot because the Microdrive does have a higher power consumption requirement than a solid state flash card.

Everybody likes to tell you that their cameras run a good long time on a charged set of batteries but those AA size can only go just so far. The 7.4v 1100mAh BP-511 lithium rechargeable pack supplied with the G1 seems to go on forever even when using the color LCD and a Microdrive. That's not to say that I don't recommend buying a second battery because I do. It is a proprietary design and unlike the Pro 70 you can not use an "off the shelf" type of battery if it dies on you in the field. The battery is charged in- camera with the supplied charger/AC power supply in about two hours. During the charge cycle the LED next to the eyelevel finder blinks to indicate the level of charge. Lithium batteries may be "topped off" whenever you like without fear of the memory effect experienced with NiCD. Lithium batteries do not discharge while sitting idle which is common to the NiMH types

The ergonomics of the G1 are very good but there are a few things that could be improved. I did not like the position of the zoom control, it would be better if it was on the top of the back above the 4-way jog switch. It is located around the shutter release and must be operated from the front with the tip of your index finger. I would also like to see the "nub" on the Rec / Power / Play dial larger, this would make it easier to operate. The I/O ports and the battery charging connector are protected by a rubber door that pops off and swings around on a very small rubber pin. Seeing that you must open this frequently to charge the battery I have to wonder how long it will be before that little pin breaks.

Using the G1 with a Canon 380EX flash yielded excellent results in the Auto and Program modes. Using it in the Shutter or Aperture priority modes often required some exposure compensation or adjustment of the flash output compensation, usually a stop or two in the minus direction. Any serious photographer will tell you that an external or off-camera flash is the only way to go for professional looking pictures. I make use of bounce flash whenever possible to avoid the "flat" looking pictures typical of builtin flash units. The 380EX is no small flash, it's bigger than the camera and just about as heavy. I would like to see the G1 have a fatter (more secure) finger grip area on the front to offset the top-heaviness when used with an external flash. What it has now is just a small rubberized strip on the front for your index finger and a raised ridge on the back for your thumb to rest up against. A larger grip would be beneficial whether using an external flash unit or not.

I've already covered the swiveling LCD and its advantages over a fixed-angle LCD. A side benefit of its agility is that you can turn it around so that it faces the inside and close it over the back of the camera and protect it from dirt and scratches. The monochrome data display on the top is much bigger than most and shows a multitude of camera and exposure settings. There are dedicated buttons for flash mode, drive mode, macro mode and spot metering and these functions can be changed without using the color LCD. The mode dial on the top is literally loaded with recording modes, no less than eleven positions to be exact. Changing these modes only requires a flip of the dial, no complex menu steps required. The combination Record / Power / Play dial is underneath of the mode dial and is operated with your thumb, it has a more than stiff detented lock at each position so it won't get accidentally turned on or off.

Exposure options abound on the G1, everything from full Auto to full Manual are there on the mode dial. For the experienced user the shutter speed and aperture priority modes will probably get a good workout. One odditiy is the F8 aperture setting which due to the shutter assembly of the camera is only available in combination with shutter speeds faster than 1/500sec. With the pre-programmed AE modes even the beginning digi-photographer will be able to extend his picture taking abilities. There's a Panfocus mode for quickly going from near to far subjects, a portrait mode that uses a large aperture for shallow depth of field, a landscape mode for scenics using infinity focus, a night mode and black & white mode and the Stitch-Assist mode with on-screen prompting to help everybody make better panoramics.

On the back is a single button that cycles you through the exposure compensation, white balance, AE-Bracketing and flash exposure compensation options. These are changed on the color LCD screen using slider bar controls or icon selections. The results are shown on the color LCD preview in realtime. Exposure compensation is +/-2 EV in 0.3 EV steps. The manual white balance is simple and very efficient requiring a single push of the button to calculate the proper color temperature. I found that the auto white balance was usually all that was needed except under mixed lighting conditions. There are white balance settings for Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Incandescent, Fluorescent and Manual Preset. AE Bracketing is where the camera takes three sequential exposures and automatically varies the exposure to insure that at least one is as close as possible to being "perfect." The AEB option sets the amount of exposure difference between the images at +/- 0.3, 0.7, 1.0, 1.3, 1.7 or 2.0 EV. Flash exposure compensation is adjustable from +/-2 EV in 0.3 EV steps.

You may have noticed my Infrared sample pictures, the G1 works wonderfully with an 89-B filter. This is the same filter that I use on my Nikon 990. On the 990 I have to frame the picture before putting the filter on because the LCD goes totally dark. On the Canon G1 I was able to preview and frame my pictures using the LCD, the picture was as bright as if I was just in regular B&W mode. I imagine that means the G1's video circuit "gains up" to compensate for the limited amount of light that passes through the IR filter. I don't know the exact dynamics here, suffice it to say that it works great and it's really nice to have the LCD to work with when shooting IR pics. I did shoot my samples in B&W mode which does not allow you to change the ISO so I am assuming that B&W mode is like Auto in that it uses a variable ISO 50-100 depending on lighting which means that the IR shots would obviously be ISO 100 and not ISO 50.

Image quality is generally very good. Color, saturation and sharpness are very comparable to its peers in the 3-megapixel category. As with all digicams that have variable ISO sensitivity, the best results are obtained using the slowest ISO equivalent. In the case of the G1 this would be ISO 50. It's important to note that when you use the camera in Auto mode the ISO will automatically vary between 50 and 100 depending on the lighting conditions. The ISO 100 pictures are very good but there is a certain amount of "noise" present that you won't see if you use ISO 50. This is especially noticeable in the large areas of blue sky often found in scenic landscape pictures. The default contrast and sharpness values yield images that some might call flat on first look but it does preserve a lot of shadow detail. You can give your pictures more "snap" by using a higher contrast setting in the camera or with software (prefered) afterwards.

The G1 performs admirably using automatic white balance under most average situations but mixed-light photos will benefit greatly from using the manual white balance option. It is quick and simple and only requires pressing the "star" button on the back while filling the frame with a known white target. There are also presets for sunny, incandescent and flourescent that work OK but not as well as manual. Perhaps one of the more interesting features of the G1 is the builtin noise reduction that kicks in when you use a shutter speed longer than 1.3 seconds. This yields nice looking outdoor night time shots that are relatively free of the usual Christmas tree lights (random red, green and blue pixels.) Close examination of pictures where the noise reduction has been employed uncovers a lot of black spots that apparently have been substituted in place of the random colored pixels. It's not perfect but it's simpler for the novice than having to shoot and subtract a dark frame with PhotoShop.

Unlike most other digicams the G1 stores its uncompressed images in raw CCD format. The Canon raw (.CRW) file type first appeared on the A5 camera several years ago. These files use much less storage space (2.42MB vs 8-9MB for TIFF) and you can also perform post-capture processing on them. Simply put you can shoot a bunch of pictures using the wrong white balance and correct it later. You can also modify the sharpening, contrast and saturation as well as the white balance when using the Canon TWAIN software to decode the raw files. Click on the hyperlink to look at the software page. I truly believe that all manufacturers should adopt this raw CCD file format instead of the TIFF for the reasons I just stated. I can see that some folks might be confused or (God forbid) have to read the manual to figure out how to use the TWAIN software. Using TIFF is pretty straight forward and yields a finished file that requires no special decoding but it doesn't afford you the ability to do post-capture processing like a raw file. And if for no other reason, you have to love those small 2.42MB files versus a gigantic 8MB file !  Not only that, the .CRW files are read-only so they become like digital negatives, you'll never accidentally overwrite them when fooling around in your favorite graphics program.

The G1 uses a 3x optical zoom lens with a 35mm equivalent focal range of 34-102mm and a fast F2 maximum aperture. There is some confusion over exactly whose lens this as we've seen this same lens on numerous digicams in the past year. Phil has a picture of three cameras that use this lens on the first page of his G1 review and one of them labels it as a Carl Zeiss lens. Regardless of who really makes it the lens performs well in a wide variety of lighting conditions and better than average in low-light. As with many cameras, the zoom lens must be extended out from the camera before it can begin capturing images. The G1 is no speed demon in this area, it requires just over seven seconds to go from off to ready to capture without the color LCD or just less than 10 seconds if using it. You can switch from record to play mode without having the lens retract if you don't hesitate at the Off position for more than 0.8 seconds.

The optical characteristics of the G1's lens are very good. It does exhibit a minor amount of barrel distortion at full wideangle and just the slightest amount of pincushioning at full telephoto. It has good macro coverage down to 6cm but only in wideangle where a certain amount of distortion is present, in telephoto mode the minimum macro distance is 20cm. The macro mode can be improved with the optional 250D closeup lens. The G1 has a focus assist lamp that is enabled when the TTL focusing system fails to see enough contrast to operate. The focus assist lamp is also used for red-eye reduction in conjunction with the flash system. Autofocus is accurate and quick and there is a manual focus function available by pressing a button on the left side of the camera. This brings up a "MF" icon and a bar display on the right side of the LCD screen. Sadly lacking is any kind of distance readout, it simply fills or empties segments of this bar display as it goes through its 30 steps. Canon would do well to add both a distance readout and magnify the screen like the Fuji 4900 Zoom.

Canon has three auxilliary lenses that were made for the G1 and these can be attached by purchasing the optional LA-DC58 lens adapter. The silver ring around the G1's lens unscrews and provides the mounting base for the adapter. The adapter also allows you to mount 58mm filters however the adapter blocks the lower 25% of the optical viewfinder so it's not all that handy. The vast majority of users will employ the lens adapter to mount the MC-DC28 wideangle (0.8x), TC-DC58 tele (1.8x) or the 250D closeup lens so they will be using the color LCD for TTL framing.

The G1's menu system when in the PAMS modes is similar to that used on the other recent PowerShot cameras. It is relatively straightforward and easy to set or change options without a lot of button pushing. Most users will be coming to the menu to change the file size and/or quality or the ISO setting. Unlike most cameras we have reviewed the Auto ISO setting only varies between 50 and 100 rather than the entire range which would also include ISO 200 and 400. The low ISO 50 speed yields the cleanest images and I suspect that most G1 users will pretty much leave it set there most of the time. Electronic CCD "noise" becomes apparent at ISO 200 and 400 settings as expected. Other menu options include JPEG or RAW, digital zoom, AF mode (Single or Continuous), Review, File numbering and the Contrast, Sharpness and Saturation settings each with three levels.

The Canon PowerShot G1 is a very good contender in the current crop of semi-pro three megapixel cameras. Those who wanted the image size, camera features and speed of the Nikon 990 but with CompactFlash II (Microdrive) support, a more conventional designed body and a flash hot shoe will love the G1. Battery life is excellent even when using the color LCD. The G1 performs admirably as an easy to use "Automatic" camera and has more than enough real camera features to thrill even the most jaded digicam user. It's not going to fit in your pocket but you can hang it around your neck and carry it with you all day without fatigue. If you're looking for the ultimate "tourist" camera then think Canon G1 + 1GB Microdrive. At least Canon is listening to us and has included a remote control -- OK now it's your turn Mr Nikon!  I suspect we'll see a good number of these cameras under the tree this year, it's a definite winner.