Jock Elliott
Hall of Famer
- Location
- Troy, NY
My wife found me busy at my desk the other day, packing up the Canon G3X.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Sending it back,” I said.
“But I thought you liked it, the pictures it took . . . I liked the pictures you showed me,” she said.
“You’re right; it takes lovely pictures, but for this kind of money (just pennies short of a kilobuck), I need to be in love with this camera to keep it, and I’m just not.”
So I sent the G3X back, but then I got to thinking: why was it that I was not in love with the G3X? After all, it made really, really nice pictures, better at extreme optical and digital zoom than my FZ200.
Trying to analyze something that comes to down to a gut reaction is tough, but I think ultimately why the G3X was not a keeper for me came down to three things.
1. Size, weight, and an add-on viewfinder = overall gestalt. With the external electronic viewfinder attached, the G3X is big, at least b y what I am accustomed to. Turned off, it’s 4.25 inches from the back of the camera to the tip of the lens, 4.5 inches from the bottom plate to the top of the EVF, and 7 inches wide. If you conceive of that as a rectangular box that must be slipped into a camera bag, it’s fairly bulky, and it would not fit comfortably in any of my camera bags (and not in the freebie camera bag that came with the G3X). With some effort, it would slide into the LLBean shoulder bag that I have for the two-camera solution. I used a piece of foam rubber to protect the EVF, but I worried that I would harm it in some way putting it in the bag or pulling it out. The G3X fit just fine with the EVF detached, but since I am an opportunistic photographer, I didn’t want to fuss with sliding the protective insert out of the hotshoe, removing the protective cover on the foot of the EVF, and then sliding the EVF into the hotshoe until it locked. I think Canon blew it in designing the G3X. They had a perfect spot for an on-board EVF where the pop-up flash is located and could have made the flash an external item that could be mounted on the hotshoe when needed.
2. I had trouble holding the G3X steady at high magnification. I don’t know if it was the weight or the balance, but it was much more difficult to frame the shot than shooting with the FZ200 at comparable magnification. Maybe in time I would have adapted.
3. I didn’t know where to put my left hand. This sounds stupid, I know, but with the FZ200 and the LX100, I naturally cradle the lens barrel with the palm and fingers of my left hand and can work whatever controls easily. With the G3X, having the fingers under the lens barrel didn’t feel quite right, and neither did having the fingers over the top of the lens barrel and the thumb beneath. Again, maybe this was an issue that I would have sorted out over time. Bottom line, though, is that the overall design felt big and clunky, and I wasn’t willing to invest the time. The pictures that the G3X make are nice, really nice, and perhaps I will come to regret my decision.
Cheers, Jock
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Sending it back,” I said.
“But I thought you liked it, the pictures it took . . . I liked the pictures you showed me,” she said.
“You’re right; it takes lovely pictures, but for this kind of money (just pennies short of a kilobuck), I need to be in love with this camera to keep it, and I’m just not.”
So I sent the G3X back, but then I got to thinking: why was it that I was not in love with the G3X? After all, it made really, really nice pictures, better at extreme optical and digital zoom than my FZ200.
Trying to analyze something that comes to down to a gut reaction is tough, but I think ultimately why the G3X was not a keeper for me came down to three things.
1. Size, weight, and an add-on viewfinder = overall gestalt. With the external electronic viewfinder attached, the G3X is big, at least b y what I am accustomed to. Turned off, it’s 4.25 inches from the back of the camera to the tip of the lens, 4.5 inches from the bottom plate to the top of the EVF, and 7 inches wide. If you conceive of that as a rectangular box that must be slipped into a camera bag, it’s fairly bulky, and it would not fit comfortably in any of my camera bags (and not in the freebie camera bag that came with the G3X). With some effort, it would slide into the LLBean shoulder bag that I have for the two-camera solution. I used a piece of foam rubber to protect the EVF, but I worried that I would harm it in some way putting it in the bag or pulling it out. The G3X fit just fine with the EVF detached, but since I am an opportunistic photographer, I didn’t want to fuss with sliding the protective insert out of the hotshoe, removing the protective cover on the foot of the EVF, and then sliding the EVF into the hotshoe until it locked. I think Canon blew it in designing the G3X. They had a perfect spot for an on-board EVF where the pop-up flash is located and could have made the flash an external item that could be mounted on the hotshoe when needed.
2. I had trouble holding the G3X steady at high magnification. I don’t know if it was the weight or the balance, but it was much more difficult to frame the shot than shooting with the FZ200 at comparable magnification. Maybe in time I would have adapted.
3. I didn’t know where to put my left hand. This sounds stupid, I know, but with the FZ200 and the LX100, I naturally cradle the lens barrel with the palm and fingers of my left hand and can work whatever controls easily. With the G3X, having the fingers under the lens barrel didn’t feel quite right, and neither did having the fingers over the top of the lens barrel and the thumb beneath. Again, maybe this was an issue that I would have sorted out over time. Bottom line, though, is that the overall design felt big and clunky, and I wasn’t willing to invest the time. The pictures that the G3X make are nice, really nice, and perhaps I will come to regret my decision.
Cheers, Jock
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