This was, by the numbers, a questionable purchase. See, it cost about as much as a closeout Rebel XT and kit lens. But the way I figured it, unless I got enough accessories to replace the 35mm camera's accessories (things like ultra-wide angle lenses and telephoto lenses) I'd still need to carry the 35mm camera... so I'd end up carting around 3 different systems. On the other hand, the G7 is pocketable, so I don't carry as much stuff.

I like this camera. It's got all the adjustments and features I want so that I can "sketch" difficult exposure situations on it. Plus, it has a hotshoe, so I can do good flash photography with much less trouble. The IS lens really works and I've had a bunch of fairly difficult shots come out tack-sharp.

The image sensor is about the same size as the A95 and I've found that this means that the actual image quality is not very much improved over the A95. If you look at a 100% crop of an A95 shot and a 100% crop of a G7 shot, the A95 looks much better. However, if you look at an 11x14 printout of an A95 shot and an 11x14 printout of a G7 shot, the G7 looks as good, if not marginally a little better.

The G7 also has decent noise reduction, so I can use some of the higher ISO settings a little more often. Every so often I'll run into a situation where the noise reduction really didn't work and even at 80 it's noisy, so I suspect that if we were to compare raw sensor output on the A95 to the G7, you'd find that the G7 is actually much noisier, it just covers up for that better.

It doesn't let me keep the shutter open longer than 15 seconds, which kinda sucks, but at least it lets me go up to ISO 1600 to get a super-grainy test shot to get a better idea of the exposure for one of my film cameras.