Canon PowerShot G15 review

Now that compact system cameras (CSCs) are available for as little as £350, is anyone going to buy a conventional compact camera that costs over £500? Canon clearly thinks so, but then, the G15 doesn’t bear much resemblance to most compact cameras.

It’s built around a 1/1.7in sensor – smaller than CSC sensors but bigger than the ones used in most other compacts. It sits behind a wide-aperture lens, at f/1.8 for wide-angle shots and f/2.8 for telephoto. Together, the sensor size and wide-aperture lens are a potent combination for maintaining high image quality in low light.

The G15 isn’t the only camera with this combination of sensor and lens. It has some formidable opponents in the forms of the Panasonic LX7 and Fujifilm X10. The G15 is marginally the heaviest of the three but its chunky body inspires confidence for build quality. We’d be more worried about the floor than the camera in the event of a fall. There’s just enough shape to the textured handgrip to sit securely in the hand, so hopefully it won’t be slipping through fingers too often.

This is one of very few compact cameras to incorporate an optical viewfinder – a crucial feature for long-sighted people who struggle with LCD screens, and useful when shooting in bright light when the screen is hard to see. The viewfinder zooms in tandem with the lens, but it’s a small, blurry view that’s heavily cropped compared to what the sensor sees. The viewfinder on the Fujifilm X10 is much better quality. The G15’s screen is much better with its sharp 922,000-dot resolution, but it’s disappointing that it doesn’t share the older G12’s articulated design.

This chunky camera affords lots of room for controls. There’s a wheel and command dial for controlling shutter speed and aperture in manual exposure mode, plus a dedicated exposure compensation dial. The latter encouraged us to adjust the exposure much more often than with cameras that require a button press to bring exposure compensation up on the screen. With dedicated buttons for AE Lock, ISO speed, autofocus point, metering mode and an option to assign white balance to a customisable button, there’s little reason to reach for the menu.

Drive mode is one reason, though. We wonder whether Canon chose to hide it away in a menu because the G15’s continuous performance isn’t much to get excited about. It managed 1.8fps for JPEGs, 1fps for raw and just 0.8fps when updating autofocus between each shot. It doesn’t compare well to the Panasonic LX7’s 5fps with updating autofocus. Canon tries to make up for it with a scene preset that captures 10 shots in a second, but with a blank screen during capture and six seconds to recover, for us the compromises outweigh the benefits. General shot-to-shot times are on the slow side, too, at 2.3 seconds in our tests. The LX7 and X10 were almost three times as fast. At least the G15’s flash refresh times are reasonably nippy, at 3.1 seconds at full flash power.

Videos are recorded at 1080p and 24fps in AVC format, and the unusually high 33Mbit/s bit rate keeps compression artefacts to a minimum. Autofocus was smooth and details were as sharp as we’ve ever seen from a compact camera’s video mode. They were significantly sharper than anything we’ve seen from Canon’s SLRs, too. The shadows fizzed with noise in low-light clips, but it wasn’t too intrusive, and other parts of the frame remained detailed and well exposed.

Easy access to white balance and exposure compensation controls helped us to take this shot quickly, and the wide aperture captured lots of light to keep noise to a minimum

Considering the impressive video quality, it’s disappointing that priority and manual exposure modes are only available for photos and not for videos, and also that the frame rate can’t be changed. At least the AE Lock button and AE compensation dial worked for videos. The soundtrack was fairly noisy, giving a dynamic range of just 32dB, but in most situations this was drowned out by environmental ambient noise. Overall, this is a high quality video camera, but the LX7 is better suited to creative use.

Details are sharp into the corners of frames, but fine textures in the grass and smaller branches aren’t as crisp as we’d expect from a CSC

Our photo tests gave much less cause for concern. Canon cameras rarely falter when it comes to automatic exposures and colour processing, and with the help of the relatively large sensor and bright lens, it delivered excellent results throughout our tests. However, while brightly lit shots were a cut above cheaper compact cameras’ output, they didn’t quite have the clarity in fine textures as CSCs and SLRs that use significantly larger sensors. Image quality in low light was undoubtedly excellent, but details were a little soft as the ISO speed went up. The LX7 and X10 were even better in low light, most likely due to the LX7’s even brighter lens and the X10’s slightly bigger sensor. The G15 also trailed slightly for dynamic range in our studio shot, with blown out highlights that the other two cameras managed to capture successfully.

The bright lens and large sensor show their worth when shooting outdoors in overcast weather, but once again the results can’t match what a CSC at this price could deliver

The G15 takes superb photos and is a pleasure to use, but comparisons with the LX7 and X10 don’t lie in its favour. It’s also around £200 more expensive. For this kind of money you could get a Canon G1 X or an upmarket CSC such as the Panasonic GX1, both of which are only a little bigger than the G15 and raise the stakes again for photo quality.

As and when the G15’s price comes down, we’d still choose the LX7 for its superior image quality in low light, more capable video mode and faster performance.