Nikon P7000, Canon G12 and why I still have a Canon G7

Serious compacts are near and dear to my heart. So, even though I've been ignoring increasing numbers of digital camera announcements because I don't feel that they actually offer anything new, I've kept up with the serious compacts, because my G7 is getting old.

For a long long time, the Canon G-series set the pace, albeit with a gap between the G6 and G7 and a few mis-steps with the G7. So much so that even die-hard Nikon shooters were using the G series because the Nikon equivalent wasn't worth bothering with. The Nikon P6000 tried and failed to compete, offering features that people largely didn't care about and mis-features like the worst RAW format ever... and Nikon has gone through a lot of trouble to make their RAW formats harder for other applications to process as is.

The Nikon P7000, in an effort to convince some of the Nikon shooters to not buy a G11, looks like somebody took a Canon G11, scratched out the Canon logo, and pasted a Nikon sticker on. Except that many of the less obvious mis-features of the P6000 are preserved.

Honestly, I'm disappointed. You cannot move forward in the marketplace by offering a copy of the previous generation's competition. And there are plenty of variations on the serious compact form factor that Nikon has yet to do.

Meanwhile, the G12 looks pretty good. A clear upgrade from the G11 and much better than the P7000.

Why I still have a Canon G7

When I got my G7, it was the best looking non-SLR camera on the market. Sure, unlike the G6 or an SLR, it didn't have RAW modes or anything like that... but it did have more manual controls and a flash hotshoe and other nice features that the rest of the marketplace lacked.

It's been far surpassed. Especially in these days when the camera makers realized that there was a marketplace of people just like me who want something other than a giant digital SLR. I see a lot of little black G-series Canon cameras and the G11 is quite respectable.

On the other hand, none of the G-series cameras that followed have impressively awesome features that make it worth replacing a perfectly good camera. RAW or more pixels would be nice, but not necessary. After all, my real work is all taken with a medium format film camera.

The cameras I most have my eye on are the mirrorless compact cameras. The first out into the marketplace was the Micro-4/3rds cameras, but Sony and Samsung have competition and I'm sure that there's more on the way. On the other hand, the marketplace is still in that point where it's kinda foolish to jump in, unless you are prepared to watch all your gear become useless.

Comments

I am, of course, concerned that the flowchart that's been going around the Internet of late lists the Micro 4/3rds camera as a "Hipster" camera. Thankfully, I'm fairly good at not looking like a hipster otherwise. And I've taken enough logic classes in college to know that if A implies B, it does not mean that B implies A.