Canon focuses on compact snapper spruce-up

PowerShot X1 hits the G spot?

By Caleb Cox, 9th January 2012

CES 2012

Canon has snapped into action at CES, introducing the long-awaited next-gen addition to its highly-popular G series of premium compact cameras.

The Canon PowerShot G1 X sits alongside its previous top dog, the PowerShot G12, displacing it at the head of the food chain as the company's best point-and-shoot.

The 14.3Mp super-snapper rocks up with a 1.5in, 14.3Mp Cmos sensor, almost matching the size of those found in mirrorless models and full-blown DSLRs. This paves the way for higher quality images in low light settings - it boasts an ISO sensitivity of 12800.

The G1 X sports a 4x 28mm lens with a 35mm equivalent of 28mm-112mm and an aperture range of f/2.8-16. It handles 1080p video through a dedicated button, and takes both Raw and Jpeg still images which can all be viewed and previewed on the 3in swivelling LCD panel on the rear.

The Canon PowerShot GX 1 starts shipping late February with an expected retail price of £700-800. ®

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Highly Rated

Posted Tuesday 10th January 2012 13:13 GMT

Anonymous Coward

It is a 1.5" sensor

1.5" is not the diagonal of the sensor itself, but a legacy measure of the diameter of a TV camera tube that would use this sensor which had to be about 1.5 times larger than the sensor diameter. See this for more info:

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2002/10/7/sensorsizes

Yes, it's a crap and meaningless way to measure the sizes of sensors, but this still how they are measured in many cases especially compact cameras (1/1.6", 2/3"etc), and more famously for 4:3" cameras.

Posted Tuesday 10th January 2012 02:35 GMT

Anonymous Coward

rocks up with a 1.5in, 14.3Mp Cmos sensor ?

It is certainly not a 1.5in sensor, that would almost be the size of a full frame sensor. It is 18.7 x 14mm which has a diagonal of 0.92in.

Posted Tuesday 10th January 2012 01:16 GMT

Mark 65

Problems problems

Yet again we see the chief issue with this type of camera from Canon, and that is that they want to charge you £700-800 for this vs £600 for a EOS 600D + 18-55 IS II from Pixmania i.e. the street prices will likely be the same. I own a G9 and this looks bigger and heavier i.e. not pocketable, and therefore I'm wondering who'll buy it at that price? I think pro/semi-pro DSLR owners want an everywhere side-kick but I don't think this will fit the bill over the m4/3 crowd or a S100.