Canon PowerShot G16 review

IMAGE AND VIDEO QUALITY – CLICK SAMPLES TO ENLARGE

Ultimately, it’s photo quality that makes or breaks a camera like this, and on balance, the G16 delivers the goods. Automatic exposures were well judged, with colours that struck a balance between flattery and accuracy. Details weren’t quite as precise as from the similar Nikon P7800 (review coming soon), both for JPEG and RAW output, but in most instances the difference was negligible. It was more noticeable towards the edges of frames, though, with the P7800 delivering crystal clear focus and the G16’s output looking slightly fuzzy in comparison. However, the G16 took a narrow lead in low light, with less intrusive noise-reduction artefacts.

The Canon’s shot (left) looks pretty good, until you compare it to the cleaner, sharper Nikon P7800’s output. There’s not much in it, though

Focus was sometimes a tad soft towards the edges of frames

Noise levels are reasonably understated when shooting in low light. Processing RAW files in Lightroom has allowed us to recover clipped highlights

The G16 doesn’t just have its immediate peers to compete with, though. It must also go up against cameras with much bigger sensors, many of which cost a similar amount and are just as pocketable. The G16 stands no chance of competing the likes of the Sony RX100 II or Panasonic GM1 for a given ISO speed, as its noise levels are significantly higher.

However, its brighter lens means that, in practice, it doesn’t have to. Setting the GM1 and G16 to the same 1/20s shutter speed in low light, the G16’s wider aperture meant that it could use ISO speeds that were around four times lower. Their resulting image quality was remarkably similar – we struggled to pick a winner. The GM1 would shoot into the lead if it was fitted with a wide-aperture lens, though, giving it the double advantage of a big sensor and a bright lens. We didn’t have the Sony RX100 II to test alongside the other two, but based on our archived sample shots we’d expect it to outperform the others at wide-angle zoom settings and fall slightly behind as it zoomed in.

The Canon uses a brighter lens, the Panasonic, a bigger sensor. The resulting image quality is remarkably similar for a given shutter speed.

1080p videos are recorded at 30 or 60fps, and our test footage was packed with crisp details. Noise reduction kept low-light shots looking clean without detail levels suffering too much. Autofocus sometimes wandered completely off track, but on the whole it performed well.

CONCLUSION

Ultimately, there’s not a huge amount the separate the these cameras for image quality. However, they vary much more for performance, ergonomics, features and price. On those bases we’d be tempted by the Panasonic LX7. It’s significantly faster in normal use, it’s slightly smaller and lighter and it’s currently available for around £300. If money were no object, we’d go for the GM1 for the flexibility of interchangeable lenses. The Canon G16 beats them both for physical controls, though, and it includes a viewfinder – that’s enough to keep it in the running.