When you’re an avid photographer, you always like to be prepared. It’s hard to leave home without a camera and a lens or two, let alone go on a long trip without all your gear. And being an avid photographer, you probably have accumulated quite a lot of gear. So, when you find yourself going on holidays to some other part of the world, you’re going to have to ask yourself: “What the hell do I take and what do I leave behind?”

I had to make that very decision at the end of 2007, when I was headed off to Cambodia with some friends. What I was considering taking was my Canon 5D body with a 24-70 ƒ2.8 and a 70-200 ƒ2.8 so I would have a nice range from 24-200 that should pretty much cover anything I needed. Oh, and maybe a flash or two. And maybe my Manfrotto tripod, since I was going to see the temples of Angkor.

Then I realised what I had become: a photo freak. That’s over 10 kg worth of gear. Am I really going to spend 6 weeks lugging around all that in a country where the only weather report you need is a small card with 32˚C and sunny written on it? Sure, if I was getting paid for it. But this was supposed to be a holiday, not an assignment. So I did a full about face, sold all my gear and bought a Canon Powershot G9.

Canon G9

I’m actually kidding about the selling all my gear, but I really did go out and buy the Canon G9. So, why did I choose the Canon G9 above other point and shoots? After doing the research, but not having actually used the camera, these were the things at attracted me to the G9:

Control – When you use DSLRs all the time, you come to rely on the control that they offer. Some things I could live without, but I had to have full control over exposure. This meant having full and easy control of the basic trinity of photography: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.

Lens – The G9 has a lens with the 35mm equivalent of 35-210, which to be honest, I didn’t really care about much. What was important to me, however, was the maximum aperture of 2.8-4.8 for it’s zoom range. I like bokeh, and it’s important to have the largest aperture when you’re dealing with reduced sensor sizes to achieve decent bokeh. Image stabilisation was a bonus.

RAW – In this matter, I probably should have done my research a little more carefully. You see, I shoot pretty much exclusively in RAW, and I use Apple Aperture exclusively to manage my RAW files. I was quite excited that the G9 had brought back RAW capabilities that were lacking in previous models. What I didn’t realise was that Apple hadn’t yet brought out support for the G9 RAW files. So the whole trip, it was JPEG all the way.

Body – It looked rugged. Metal body, good weight, solid controls. I wanted a camera that I could chuck around and the G9 certainly looked the deal. The 3″ screen was also a nice change from the 2.5″ one I was used to on the 5D.

So, those were the reasons I chose the G9.

In part 2 I’ll talk about whether those features were actually useful once I was on the trip, what I liked and didn’t like about the camera, and how it performed as an only camera. Stay tuned.

part 1 // part 2 // part 3 // part 4