Thanks to “Smilin’ Mike” Bard at EP Levine, we got a chance to run some early tests on the spanikin’ new Canon G11.  Much as I went into it wanting to love the camera, I’d read some recent reports that the file quality wasn’t up to snuff.  This is in spite of early reports from friends saying they loved the thing, and were shooting at very high ISO with great results. Stop by and visit EP Levine someday, either on their site or in person- the place is a legend in New England photography.
 

Again, as we did with the Leica M9, we have the test targets lined up and will post that data as soon as we get it, but the preliminary shots, shown here, of Smilin’ Mike himself made us, well, not smile too much.  First, you should know, you need to download the Camera RAW 5.5 update which gives "preliminary support" for the G11, and that's here.  What "preliminary support" means, I sincerely don't know, but I'm hoping it means they haven't done much work with the high-ISO noise.  Read on. 
 

At ISO 400 we got this.  This is pretty much on par with the results we got with the older G9 at ISO 400. 
 

At ISO 800 it gets downright ugly.  Now, not quite as ugly as the Leica M9, if you can believe it, that for a camera that’s selling for 1/10th the price has a cleaner file, but it’s still not what we’d consider usable, period, for any shooting that needs a quality image.
 

Check back for the testing and the graphs, and we’ll compare the Olympus EP1 with the G11, and, just to stir things up, let’s throw the M9 in there too.  Should be great fun!
 

Now, as far as the camera handling goes, the controls are a bit of an improvement and the lens mechanism seemed a little more robust than the earlier models.  This could just be because my G9 lens jammed and broke, that I’m a little sensitive to that, but in any case I hope it stands up to more abuse.  The big deal, of course, is the swing-out display.  
 

Still, I’m not placing that order for the camera yet- not until I see the files from a few other players in the “pocket-pro” market. 
 

Hey.  That has a nice ring to it, no?