Gizmo

By Andy Walker, Cyberwalker Media Syndicate

Most digital camera these days come with features that appeal to the casual point-and-shoot photographer.

Then there are high-end devices used by professionals.

In an odd place in the middle is the Canon PowerShot G1. It's a high-resolution camera that will be very much appreciated by the serious amateur photographer. The device is rated at 3.34 megapixels, which will produce images as big as 2048 x 1536 pixels, which will product a decent 8x10 inch print on a colour printer.

The camera has lots of onboard controls that can be used to finesse a shot. A shooter can adjust image quality parameters such as bit depth, white balance, contrast, sharpness, and colour saturation. The camera also has manual shutter and exposure controls. Most interesting is that exposure begins only 0.07 seconds after pressing the shutter button. If you're familiar with digital cameras, you know that there's lag time between clicking the shutter button and the capture of the actual shot.

A built-in buffer memory supports continuous shooting of up to 10 consecutive images at 1.7 frames per second (when the LCD monitor and flash are off). The camera can also record movie files at 15 frames per second for about 30 seconds. The movies are saved as AVI files.

Most appealing on this camera is an LCD monitor on the back that swings out like the wing monitor on a camcorder.

The camera comes with a suite of photo software including the Canon Zoom Browser. This gets the camera's images onto a personal computer via a USB cable. Canon needs to rethink this software, as it's not very intuitive. Nonetheless, serious camera buffs will figure it out.

Price: $1,500 Canadian / $999 US
More info: http://www.canon.com
Buy it: Call 1-800-OK-CANON for Canadian and U.S. retail information. At Amazon.com