Digital Home Thoughts: Canon PowerShot G10: The Perfect Pocket Camera?

"The PowerShot G10 ($499) is the flagship camera in Canon's point-and-shoot lineup. Its highlights include a 14.7 Megapixel CCD, 5X wide-angle zoom lens, image stabilization, a high resolution t3-inch LCD, and more manual controls than you can shake a stick at."

This Canon is almost the perfect small, carry-anywhere camera for photo enthusiasts. It is fun to use, can take RAW images and has great manual capabilities. At ISO 80, the photos from this camera rival those from larger and more expensive digital SLR's. But it has one glaring flaw - low light performance. It seems that Canon got caught up in the megapixel race and by increasing the number of megapixels on the same 1/1.7 inch sensor, it increased the noise in the images which really shows up in low light photography. Canon would have been better served reducing the megapixels and the subsequent noise. If you don't need low light, it is a great camera to get.