Alex Robinson

Sunday’s MR2 club run was somewhat more low key than last month’s extravaganza of craziness with six cars showing up; 3 AWs, 1 SW, 1 Spyder and 1 Porsche Cayman S. One year on from a last trip to Pegasus we took another trip out to see how the developments were progressing and surprisingly a reasonable amount has happened despite the somewhat frosty economic conditions. With many more roads laid there was much more to explore and the man-made lake is finished and almost full (quite a sight to see). There’s also a big, flash bridge across it but it wasn’t quite ready to be opened yet. Still, living there in a manufactured community really doesn’t appeal to the yokel in me, apparently you aren’t allowed a washing line…

MR2s and one Porsche at Pegasus

As for new toys to play with, well it’s not mine but I’m borrowing Paul’s 12-24mm Nikkor lens which is an interesting experience, particularly for the kind of shooting I’m doing at the moment. So far I’ve found it quite cool, I’m hoping to use it more over the next few days once I get my car warranted. Shooting ultra wide is an interesting experience, before now the widest lenses i’ve ever used are my 16-85mm Nikkor and a 45mm Pentax 67 lens. I suppose my main reason is I never felt the need to go wider until now. Sharpness wise the 12-24 is pretty good, not as sharp as the 16-85 I don’t think, though more testing is required to find out what the sharpest aperture is etc. I’d like to buy an ultra wide lens though I’m tossing up if it’s worth the coin or not, (I can always stitch a couple of shots, what I’m doing at the moment doesn’t call for speed) and if I want to invest money in glass that won’t work on full frame. This is a hard one because it’s impossible to say where the industry is heading in the next few years, I don’t want to sink a grand on a lens only to discover that Nikon doesn’t make a successor to the D300s with an APS-C sensor—there’s no way I could trade down to a D90 level camera.

Nikon 12-24 mm test shots.

So far we’ve seen Canon seems to be committed to making APS-C sensor cameras at the higher end of the market, though I’m not convinced that the 7D offers much in terms of quality over the 50D or even the 40D, the lenses supplied with the cameras certainly aren’t up to the task of dealing with 15, let alone 18 megapixels. That said, I’m yet to see the Canon 15-85, I wonder if it’s on par with my Nikkor? Probably not I would guess, I’m thinking it’ll be to my lens as the Canon 18-200 is to the Nikon 18-200—a distant second.

As for the new G11, I’ve finally had a chance to play with one and to be honest I think I’d take a G10 instead. As best as I can see there’s little tangible gain in ISO quality, maybe a stop. I would guess this could be somewhat offset by pixel binning (14.7 down to 10), shooting RAW and careful noise reduction. I much prefer the G10′s fixed 3″ screen to the new folding unit, it’s smaller and has a hard plastic cover. Unfolding and folding the screen is really just a hassle. I think the days of these tilting screens are numbered anyway, anyone whose seen the screen on the Fujifilm S200 will agree, it’s visible at literally every angle, even almost directly side on you can still see accurate colours and brightness. I’d much prefer this technology to tilting screens. As for the Canon’s tilting screen, my absolute biggest bitch is that it doesn’t fold out 180 degrees, it stops just short so it’s always on a slight angle while you’re shooting with it folded out. This seems to be a pretty stupid oversight from a company with god knows how many years making excellent cameras with these kinds of screens (maybe they forgot after they dumbed down the A series to idiot level?)

The controls are basicly the same, though it does use Canon’s new menu structure (I prefer the old one). It feels good in hand but then so did the G7, 9 and 10, it’s nice to see a continuity between models. As for an overall impression, it’s a nice camera besides the new screen but not really the upgrade people were hoping for, I guess everyone unrealisticly assumed that dropping nearly 5 megapixels would endow it with SLR-like low light performance—it doesn’t. I also think the days of cameras like the G11 are numbered, with larger sensor compacts flooding the market prices will drop, especially as theres precious little price difference between a G11 and an entry level SLR. Since it’s not big enough to really pocket then it doesn’t really appeal to me as a compact anyway, I think the S90 will be a much more interesting camera.