Canon Powershot G5X.2 User Review 26 September 2019

When I reviewed the Canon Powershot G7X.2 in April this year I wrote:

It also appears that the product development people at Canon have made the same kind of product splitting decision this time around.

The G7X.3 has a microphone jack and more video capabilities but no EVF.

The G5X.2 has a better lens and a pop-up EVF but no microphone jack.

In addition the G5X.2 loses the always ready EVF of the Mk1, along with the fully articulated screen, hotshoe and front dial.

I have to confess I do not understand Canon’s product strategy here.

It seems to me as a buyer and user of these cameras that in a shrinking market a better  strategy would be to put all the good features into one very capable package which would appeal to the expert/enthusiast buyer who is likely to consider a camera (rather than a smartphone) as the preferred device for making photos.

Smartphone makers have figured out that people want a device which can manage just about any kind of photographic requirement and do so in a manner which is very user friendly. 

They would think it ridiculous that anyone might make one model which is good for still photos and a different model which is better for video.

But camera makers particularly Canon, continue to do this.

Moving right along let’s see what Canon is offering in the G5X.2.

Overall the camera is  well specified and has many of the features which I think users would expect of a current model camera.

You can read about these in detail elsewhere but in summary the package is compact yet capable. It has a nice sharp lens with a wide aperture and very useful 5x zoom range. The (Sony) sensor has plenty of resolution, good high ISO capability and good dynamic range. There is a pop-up EVF of good quality and a swing up-down screen also of good quality. The touch screen functions work very well. The controls are decently well considered for a compact and provide quite a good user experience. The camera can do single shot or continuous drive with single or continuous (servo) autofocus.

It does very nice auto panoramas in camera.

It can do FHD or 4K  video with no crop.

It has Wi-fi and Bluetooth connectivity.

That all sounds pretty good but consider that the latest smartphones can do all this and much more with much better connectivity included in the package. And they make phone calls and connect to the internet and….and…..and….the list goes on…..

In general this is very good. I have used the camera outdoors in very bright light, in situations with high subject brightness range, indoors in low light and at night.

The lens/sensor/processor imaging system manages all this quite well except for one main blemish, see color fringing below.

The sensor in the G5X.2 is a version of the Sony 15.9mm 20mpx chip which has found its way into numerous cameras from Sony, Canon and Panasonic. They all have about the same very good  noise and dynamic range characteristics but the latest versions have a higher operating speed.

Some reviewers have guessed that the sensor in the G5X.2 is the same or very similar to the one in the Sony RX100.4.

I am well aware of sample variation in consumer camera lenses. I suspect this accounts for much of the variation in lens quality assessments between one reviewer and another. My copy of the G5X.2 lens is much better than my copy of the G7X.2 lens. The G5X.2 lens has a greater zoom range, a wider aperture in the middle of the zoom range and is sharper at all focal lengths.  Overall it is a very good lens.

Flare can sometimes be an issue when bright light enters the frame particularly if adjacent to a dark subject element.

In parts of the image where bright and dark subject elements are adjacent, such as foliage against a hot sky (bright white clouds) or any hard transition from very light to very dark, I am finding that color fringing is a significant issue. I make no claim to being an expert on these things but the fringing appears to me to consist of two types. One is red/blue and the other is purple.

It is most apparent at the wide end of the lens, in raw files, either full sized or C-raw (I tested both) but does also appear to a reduced degree  in JPGs.

When I click on the Profile tag under Lens Corrections in Adobe Camera Raw, there is either no reduction in the fringing or the character of the fringing changes from purple to blue/yellow.  The lens profile is listed as “Built-in”. I don’t know whether this means  Adobe and Canon have not yet developed a correction profile for this camera or if there is a profile but it does not function properly to remove the fringing..

I can usually get rid of the red/blue fringing with the sliders in Adobe Camera Raw but the purple fringing can be more stubborn. If I drag the Defringe slider any further than about 2-3, I will sometimes find that the dreaded gray fringing appears somewhere else in the frame. This is most apparent on light skin tones.

So I resort to using the Adjustment Brush locally with the Defringe slider set high. This helps but does not always remove all the color fringing.

The color fringing issue is not as bad on the G5X.2 as I found it to be with the G1X.3 but is still significant and can add to processing time with some images.

On side-by-side testing I find the Sony RX100.5A can sometimes produce a very small amount of color fringing in Raw files, easily removed by checking the Profile box in the lens Corrections window.

After some experimentation I am finding good JPG output using Landscape Picture Style with High ISO Speed Noise Reduction at [Low].  When pixel peeping at 100% I find that JPG output from the Sony RX100.5A has slightly less luminance noise and slightly better sharpness than the G5X.2.

However on its own merits the G5X.2 does a decent job with JPGs which have nicely judged tonal gradation.

Raw files are very versatile with considerable room for highlight and shadow recovery. The camera can manage subjects with high brightness range without blowing out highlights or losing dark tones.

The video specs look pretty good. I tried FHD 25P and 4K video. I am not the person to say much about video quality but the 4K did look better to me with more accurate colors. The FHD video tended to render light skin tones excessively red.

The inbuilt microphones pick up a lot of extraneous noise including that of the OIS mechanism which I found a bit disconcerting.

The Sony RX100.5A does better video with cleaner sound, more accurate colors, less jitter when panning and better clarity.  

The G5X.2 is much more responsive than the Mk1, particularly when shooting Raw.

Shot to shot time is very short even with Raw. I can make 10 single shots each focussed separately in 3 seconds giving a shot to shot time of about 0.3 seconds. In practice I never feel the camera is holding up the capture process at all.

My tests show that with the stabiliser on I can get sharp shots at shutter speeds three EV steps slower than with the stabiliser off. When I am using the camera the effect of the stabiliser is clearly evident in the viewfinder.

The G5X.2 uses the same little NB13L battery as other current Powershots. It is barely adequate for the task of driving the monitor, EVF, power zoom, OIS, focus motor and flash. I recommend at least one and for prolific shooters two spare batteries.

Some reviewers and forum posters have commented unfavourably on the autofocus in the G5X.2. One  review editor said “…it can’t focus well on moving subjects”  despite the review finding that it can in fact do so quite well.

It just does so using settings which are different from those applicable to current Sony cameras.  The same reviewer said “..video is limited by unusable autofocus”, which is a bit harsh.

Some armchair critics have opined, without the benefit of actual testing, that the AF could not be any good because it uses contrast detect (CDAF) without Depth From Defocus (DFD) or Dual Pixel AF (DPAF) or phase detect AF (PDAF).

The image count on my camera is now at 1780 indicating I have made a lot of pictures with it and am in a position to comment usefully about AF capability.

* Single AF is fast, accurate and reliable in bright or low light. In all the frames I have made to date the only ones where I can see a mis focus are those where there was some user error on my part.

* I tested continuous AF on cars coming towards and away from the camera at approximately 40 kph. With Raw capture, AF Servo and High Speed Continuous Drive with the lens at max zoom, the camera held focus on the cars quite easily at around 8 fps with 90% of frames sharply in focus.

The only potential problem  in this case is that the AF area frame disappears while the shutter is held fully depressed. I was quite disconcerted by this initially but soon realised it is less of an issue than might be imagined. The reason is that at 8fps one is so busy keeping the subject in frame that identifying the precise AF area is not feasible. So I just place the AF area in the center for most subjects or about 2/3 of the way up the frame for a person coming towards the camera.

The G5X.2 does not do continuous AF in [Face detect+tracking] mode. This seems to be the issue which gets some reviewers exercised, because the latest Sony RX100 models do work that way.

The Sony system is more advanced in the technological sense. Whether it is better or not in practice will depend on what one is trying to photograph.

* Continuous AF in video. I am not the video guy however I made several videos in FHD and 4K to test the continuous AF. I found it to be slow but smooth and reliable. It is certainly usable as long as one understands that the AF will glide smoothly and yes, a bit slow for some,  from one focussed distance to the next, without making a sudden jump.

I have reported on this in another post. I rated the G5X.2 at 65/100 which is pretty good for a compact. I rated the G1X.3 a bit better at 68 and the Sony RX100.5A substantially lower at 52.

Overall I find the G5X.2 a pleasant camera to use. Given a choice of the G5X.2 or the Sony RX100.5A I prefer the Canon for its better user experience.

The G5X2 is a good compact camera which in my view could have been better but for three things, maybe four if you count the color fringing.

The first of these is product splitting. I suspect that the decision to market the G5X2 and G7X3 as two separate products will irritate and disappoint plenty of current and erstwhile Canon fans.

The second is Canon’s annoying habit of adding some features but taking away others with each new model.

The third is more abstract in concept but I believe ultimately more important. It goes to the viability of the compact camera genre and even to the survival of Canon as a major player or any kind of player in the imaging world.

Already Canon has slipped a long way behind Apple, Samsung and Google in imaging leadership status.

I think that Canon and all the other camera makers might do well to reconsider what they are doing and in the process figure out if cameras have any place in the imaging world and if so what.

Consider the Swiss watch industry. This was almost destroyed by the advent of digital watches in the 1970s. Exports fell from  40 million units in 1973 to 3 million in 1983. Many firms failed and many employees lost their jobs.

Eventually the Swiss realised they could not hope to compete with inexpensive Casio and Seiko digital models which kept perfect time, ran 5 years on one battery and rarely developed faults.

They also realised that for a significant number of customers a watch could be an object of desire and could engender pride of ownership.

So they went upmarket with very expensive models providing buyers with a status symbol and giving sellers a high profit margin on each unit and have been doing rather well as a result.

Of the camera makers I would nominate Leica as the one which has always positioned itself as provider of objects of desire. Leica too, almost failed several times but apparently is now doing well.  

Leica’s biggest seller is the Q.  In Australia the price is  AUD7990 for the Q2 without a handle or thumbrest. I think the only way to understand this  is to realise that people are buying it as a status symbol which also happens to take pictures.

I think that if cameras are to survive their makers might do well to consider what exactly they are or could be selling,  to whom and for what purpose.

My guess is that some of them might  survive if  they can position themselves as purveyors of objects of desire and imaging status symbols.  I think they know this which likely explains their move to high pixel count full frame models which very few photographers actually need. 

Getting back to the issue of compact cameras, my personal wish is for a “full house” type of compact, fixed lens camera, with all the latest features and capabilities in one package.

This could be about the general size and configuration of one of the Sony A6000 series models but with a built in (not interchangeable) collapsing zoom lens. These cameras are only 10mm wider than the G5X.2. With a more user friendly control layout such a camera could have a very impressive capability and be the kind of device an enthusiast/expert photographer might feel proud to own and use.