Best Enthusiast Digital Camera

Imaging Resource Picks section. They're well known for their exhaustive testing of digital cameras. They investigate various aspects of each digital camera to help you pick the best one for your needs. But they know that sometimes you just want someone with experience to tell you which digital camera to buy. To serve that need, they've revamped their Picks to get straight to the point, listing your top digital camera choices by category.


Best Enthusiast Digital Camera


Canon PowerShot G9
12.1 megapixels, 6.00x zoom
$474.36



Canon updates a classic "enthusiast" model, delivers a real winner! Sometimes, you just don't have the space or patience to lug along your SLR and several lenses, but still want good image quality, and plenty of manual control and flexibility to let your creativity express itself. That's where a camera like the Canon G9 comes in. The Canon G9 is the latest in one of the most famous product lines in the digicam industry, stretching all the way back to the original G1 first introduced in the Fall of 2000. The most recent G7 model drifted from its enthusiast-oriented roots a little bit, dropping RAW file capability, but that's been restored in the new G9. Old G-series fans will miss the original swivel-screen, but the big, bright 3" LCD on the G9 may console them a little. What most impressed us about the Canon PowerShot G9 though, was its image quality: Great color with loads of resolution. Like many high-megapixel cameras these days, it suffers a little from image noise at low ISO settings, but its important to keep in perspective just how fine-grained that noise will be at any reasonable print size. We found that even ISO 400 & 800 shots made surprisingly decent-looking 8x10 inch prints. Talk about detail: Who'd have imagined being able to make great-looking 16x20 prints from a "pocket" digital camera even a few years ago?


Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50
10.1 megapixels, 12.00x zoom
$481.11



Long zoom, high res digicam delivers great prints Panasonic's Lumix FZ50 takes the company into new territory in terms of resolution, matching the resolution of many popular SLRs, and exceeding their zoom abilities with one very long 12x, 35-420mm Leica zoom. Though the Panasonic FZ50 is as big as an SLR, there are a few tradeoffs in terms of image quality. The sensor's smaller size means that the noise suppression systems have to work harder to erase the considerable noise that occurs even at the Lumix FZ50's lowest ISO setting. That's the story for all 10-megapixel sensors in digicams, though. The good news is that the Panasonic FZ50's print performance is quite good, producing nice 13x19 inch prints. Our favorite feature is the FZ50's mechanical zoom mechanism, which does more to equal the framing control offered by an SLR. It also allows quiet zooming while capturing video, a little-noted problem for most long zoom digicams. It's all wrapped up with a refined Panasonic menu system with enough automatic and manual exposure modes to please all types of shooters. For those looking for a great all-purpose digicam and don't mind the extra heft and size, the Panasonic FZ50 is a great choice.