Various points...
I haven't used a G10, but have owned a G9 for the past year.
@PeterG: The G9 has a battery-level indicator, but with only 3-bars, and a tendency to remain on the 3 for a long time, then goes 222222222222222222111110 - it doesn't give a great deal of warning. You wouldn't want to begin a day on 2-bars!
@Kevin L: While "purple-fringing" (PF) might be regarded as a form of chromatic abberation (CA), it is distinct from that seen on old-fashioned film cameras with simple lenses. Traditional CA results in orange/blue fringes on high-contrast edges (fence-post against snow, branches/twigs against sky) with the orange or blue colour according to whether the edge is light-to-dark or dark-to-light working radially from the centre of the image - simply because the lens magnification is slightly different for light of different wavelengths. PF is commonly seen on digital cameras and is typically purple (except when its green or red) and is possibly more of a lens-flare effect. The curious thing about PF is that it doesn't depend on the direction of the light/dark edge, but the colour does depend whether the edge is in front of or behind the plane of focus. There's an awful lot is misinformation published on purple fringing, but it does have distinctly different physical origins to conventional CA.
@PhilA: agreed. The samples don't begin to do justice to the camera.
The whole point of the G-series of Canon cameras is the high degree of manual control, in a carry-everywhere form-factor. Shoot raw (with JPEGs as 'proofs'), work the exposure manually, fine-tune the white-balence and contrast afterwards, if necessary, from the RAW file.
Sure, the G9/G10 doesn't give the same command over focus as an SLR, and owing to its small sensor the image is noiser than an SLR and has much greater depth of field than an SLR (so you can't creatively cast background into blur). But it does offer vastly more creative control than other compacts on the market. It's the SLR-enthusiasts' everyday camera.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
