You may recollect which final month, Canon’s flagship G12 compress camera was leaked in an accidentally published CNET examination. Now, over 3 weeks later, a same camera is strictly central.

One of a irritating things about Canon is a synthetic hobbling of facilities to have the cameras fit into the product line hierarchy. The cameras all make use of a same processing chips (currently a DIGIC 4), though only have the subset of facilities switched upon. All manufacturers do this, but a G-series has been the particularly bad example: After a G9, released back in 2007, Canon switched off hi-def video in the top-of-the-range compact. Why? Nobody knows.

Now it’s behind, and a G12 will shoot 720p video during 24fps. The camera keeps the sensor at a sensible 10 megapixels as well as will fire up to ISO3200. The back 2.8-inch LCD has the rather walking 461,000 dots, afterwards visual wizz runs from 28mm to 140mm (35mm equivalent) as well as the orifice ranges from the fairly wide ƒ2.8 to ƒ4.5.

Mercifully, Canon’s alternative additions have been also useful to a serious photographer. Instead of the slew of gimmicky extras (cough Samsung NX100 cough), Canon has added an EOS SLR-style front carryout dial, hybrid image-stabilization (which functions in mixed planes) as well as multiple aspect-ratios, so you can shoot wide-screen or square cinema in-camera. These come in further to a already renowned primer carryout knobs.

The G12 is the really plain (literally) refurbish to a G11, nonetheless right away it has a little critical foe in a form of Nikon’s almost identical P7000. That is, of course, good for us buyers. The G12 costs $500.

G12 product page [Canon]