Brent Koppenhaver

Jenson Button’s drive to fifth place yesterday in the Brazilian GP has locked up the 2009 F1 championship with one race remaining. Button, driving for Ross Brawn’s eponymous team, started the season with a bang by winning six of the first seven races.  Results that followed were somewhat subdued, as other teams came to grips with the new regulations for 2009 and Rubens Barrichello found his form in the second Brawn.  Through it all Button was able to maintain his points-scoring consistency and now sits 15 points ahead of his nearest rival with only ten points left up for grabs.

In addition to Jenson’s title the Brawn team was also able to celebrate clinching the constructors’ championship in only their first year of competition.  The team had previously been known as the Honda factory squad, and following the Japanese manufacturer’s withdrawal from competition last winter there were serious concerns they would even make it to the grid this year.  Thankfully for the sport, Brawn was able to pull everything together with a week to spare before the first race of the year in Australia, which they dominated.

By the way, spare a thought for Mark Webber who took a second career F1 victory with his win in Brazil.  All the talk after the race has been about Button’s championship with little coverage of Webber’s faultless drive.  Also showing well were Robert Kubica for BMW in second and outgoing champion Lewis Hamilton for McLaren completing the podium.  The race was action-packed from the start, with several large crashes, aggressive on-track passing, and even a flash-fire brought about by spilled fuel in the pits (the “Iceman” Kimi Raikkonen drove straight through the fire and hardly took his foot off the throttle).  The season reaches its conclusion in two weeks time at the brand new Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi.

Race Report | Winners & Losers | Conclusions | Stats & Facts

A few weeks ago I bought a new Canon Powershot G10 to replace my three-year-old Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7.  The Panasonic is a 6-megapixel superzoom (12x) that has served me well, documenting all our family trips including Spain and Greece as well as our honeymoon in Jamaica.  However, I was growing dissatisfied with the image quality (both noise and color balance) and lack of a wide-angle on the lens.  So I found myself looking for a new compact camera with manual controls somewhere between a point-and-shoot like Sara’s SD870 IS and a full-on digital SLR like my (now gracefully aging) EOS 20D.

The G10 has been on my short list since it was released last year but recently several other interesting options have been announced.  The Canon G11, for instance, is an evolution of the G10 with a swiveling LCD screen and a supposedly improved (less noise) 10-megapixel sensor.  I was really hoping that the G11 would be announced with a CMOS sensor instead of a CCD like the G10.  Since that didn’t happen I’m expecting the image quality will be similar to the G10, except for several of the higher ISO settings, at the expense of resolution.  Add in the fact that I’ve got mixed feelings about swiveling LCDs and I guess the G11 left me a bit cold.

Another option was the new Powershot S90 which is smaller than the G10 and also has the G11’s revised image sensor.  The zoom range is a bit on the low end at 3.8x, although it does have a 28mm wide-angle.  It has an interesting control dial around the lens used to control various photographic settings, and very few buttons on its exterior.  Unfortunately, I like buttons on the exterior as it means I don’t have to dive down into the menus to change common settings.  With this camera it appears to boil down to being a little too close to Sara’s ELPH in style and operation with not enough camera-geek gadgetry for me.

The real wildcard on my list was the Panasonic Lumix GF1, which uses the Micro Four Thirds standard and has a CMOS sensor.  Looking at sample images this camera has extremely smooth high-ISO performance, easily as good as a DSLR.  Unfortunately it also has the burden (for a small camera) of interchangeable lenses which means more equipment to carry around if you want the same capabilities in terms of focal lengths.  If I’m going to be carrying around equipment I would rather just use my 20D.  Plus I’m tired of looking at images with the typical Panasonic color balance straight from the camera.  Throw in the fact that it’s almost twice as expensive as the G10 and it’s just not the right camera for me (although it is undoubtedly a very nice camera).

Finally, on to the G10.  It’s a year old, but to me that just means it’s on sale.  The camera handling is excellent in my opinion.  It has dedicated dials for picture mode, ISO sensitivity, and exposure compensation, plus the quick control dial on the rear to adjust aperture and shutter speed.  It has a flash hot shoe which means I can use a bounce-flash for indoor pictures.  It has a nice zoom range (5x) that includes a 28mm wide-angle.  The biggest complaint I have read about online concerns the image sensor and it’s high pixel density.  Having looked at some sample images I can see the noise issue at higher ISOs but to me the grain of the noise is not unacceptable–certainly it’s better than my Panasonic.

So I’ve had the camera for a few weeks now and am really enjoying it.  I especially like the Canon color balance of the JPEGs, and RAW capability is something I didn’t have with the FZ7.  The little guy feels dense and solidly built, plus it’s smaller than the Panasonic.  I’m hoping in the coming days for the weather to cooperate so I can take a few photographs of the changing trees in the area (we’ve had rain and below-average cold temps which has incidentally put the brakes on my cycling activities).  Camera shopping is fun.  Sometime in the future I’m going to make a post listing all the cameras I’ve used up to this point–as I think about it there have been quite a few.