Camera 5: Canon G3 Digital Camera

I had a number in my mind, of when I would put my 35mm SLR in the display cabinet, and switch to digital camera. The number was 22 mega pixels. That’s the number of the average “pixels” per frame in a regular 35mm film.

Well, I keep up with the latest news and I waited and waited, and wait some more. But the pixel count of the digital camera was staying put at about 2 and 3.2 and then 4 after a few years. And my oldest kid is now growing up so quickly that if I waited, he would be 18 before I make the leap.

I finally bite hard on the lip the moment it reaches 4 mega pixels. At 4 mega pixels, photo quality 5x7 enlargements is possible, so I decided to acquire the “best” non digital SLR of the time. It was between the choice of Nikon Coolpix, Canon G3 and Sony (due to my fascination on infra-red landscape). Sony was quite far behind Nikon and Canon at the time, despite making most of the CCD chips for the major digital camera brands in the world. Nikon Coolpix was good but it did not look very nice (unlike their SLRs that look heavenly). And then there’s Canon G3, an “upgrade” to the acclaimed G2.

After extensive research, I decided to get the Canon G3… (even though I always secretly wanted to buy a Nikon… just like I do not know why, I have never bought a pair of Nike despite wanted a pair ever since… forever)

The idea was making the G3 a snapshot camera for everyday life and a backup for my Canon Elan 7… well, after using it for a few weeks. The Canon Elan 7 is getting more and more shelve time. After a couple months, the Elan 7 has it’s permanent place in the glass cabinet.

The Canon G3 was an amazing gem. It has a good lens with nice range (though I would prefer a better wide angle), very stable shutter that I constantly slowed the shutter down to 1/20sec, the bugger has a Neutral Density filter BUILT IN!, second curtain sync flash, remote control and a very useable video recorder.

I used it to shoot landscape, sports, portraits, black and white, details of the eyes, and even bought an adapter to mount it onto my Meade ETX telescope to shoot pictures of the planets (I will post some of those some day). It was a little camera that wants to go everywhere and ready at all time. With two 256 MB CF cards in the bag and I was confident of every situation that life can throw at me.

Well, that’s the story of my first digital Camera.