Introduction

Ease of Use

The Canon PowerShot G9 X is a truly pocketable premium compact camera, and unless you've got ridiculously tight pockets, it should feel at home in most jeans or jacket pockets.

You can buy the G9 X either in black or silver. The silver version is part textured with a tan coating (the black version has a black texture), which gives it a retro and stylish look. Although there's no raised grip, the texture helps give you purchase, while there's an ever so slightly raised thumb rest on the back of the camera too.

On the top of the Canon PowerShot G9 X, there's a power on/off button, a playback button, the shutter release, which is surrounded by a zoom switch, and a mode dial. The mode dial contains 10 different exposure mode options, including manual, aperture priority (Av), shutter priority (Tv) and Program, as well as Auto, Hybrid Auto, Scene, movie, Creative Shot, and a space marked as “C” which can be used for saving a group of custom settings - useful if you often find yourself shooting a particular type of scene.

Front of the Canon PowerShot G9 X

The zoom, at 3x, is quite a modest zoom, but the zoom switch moves the lens in and out smoothly and fluidly. If you have digital zoom enabled, it will pause ever so slightly before going into digital zoom territory, which is good for allowing you to keep an eye on only using the optical zoom if you wish.

Finally, the Canon PowerShot G9 X's inbuilt flash can be found on the top plate. To raise it, there's a small switch found just underneath it. You push it back into the housing of the camera when you don't want to use it anymore.

Moving to the back of the camera, most of it is taken up by the G9 X's three-inch touchscreen. However, there are four useful buttons just to the right hand side of the screen. There's a dedicated movie record button, a quick menu button, a main menu button and an info button. The info button changes the display of the back of the camera.

The Q set button also has a corresponding touchscreen button. Pressing the button, or tapping the icon on screen, will allow you to make changes to a group of commonly used settings, such as image quality, white balance, focusing type and so on. With no directional keys on the back of the camera, you'll need to use the touchscreen to make selections - if you're not a fan of touchscreens, you'll quickly get frustrated with the GX9.

Rear of the Canon PowerShot G9 X

Other common settings such as ISO, exposure compensation and aperture can also be changed via the touchscreen, with “buttons” along the bottom of the screen which can be tapped - you can then use a swiping motion along the screen to alter the setting, or, if you prefer, you can use the rotating control dial which is found around the lens (once a setting, i.e. exposure compensation is selected).

It takes a little while to get used to navigating everything with the Canon PowerShot G9 X's touchscreen - perhaps especially because there are a few physical buttons on the side - however, once you do, it starts to become second nature. You can also set the focus point via the touchscreen - simply tap the area you want to use - since there are no directional keys, there's no other way to do this. It would be nice if you could customise the Quick menu to include options that you use frequently, and to remove the options you don't use all that often.

The main menu button is used to access the more extensive menu, which again is navigated through using the touchscreen - it's a little more frustrating using the touchscreen for this action as menu items require a double press - but again it's something you get used to.

Top of the Canon PowerShot G9 X

Moving back to the control wheel around the front of the lens, it can be used for a variety of functions. When you're in aperture priority, by default it will control aperture, but there's a (touchscreen) button you can press to swap it from the default to exposure compensation or ISO, which can come in handy if you prefer to change those more often than aperture. In manual mode, you can swap between aperture, shutter speed and ISO.

An interesting feature of the G9 X - and most Canon compact cameras - is Hybrid Auto. This takes a short (2 second) clip of video just before the shutter release is pressed and amalgamates all of the clips together at the end of a calendar day. The resulting video can be played back as a type of slideshow with the videos and still images. For most every day shooting scenarios it's not that useful, but for special events, such as weddings, parties or perhaps holidays it's a fun feature. It would be nice if you could have more control over it though - for example, if you could choose which photos make the final video, or if you could use it when shooting in other exposure modes.

Creative photographers may want to use the Creative Shot mode. This takes an image and applies five different filters and crops. You don't get to choose exactly which filters or crops are used, but you can select from “Auto”, “Retro”, “Monochrome” and so on. Again it's a fun feature which can lead to some pleasing results, and with a clean JPEG too, you're not stuck with an unsatisfactory crop or filter if you don't like what the camera produces.

The Canon PowerShot G9 X in-hand

There's a dedicated button for activating the camera's Wi-Fi on the side of the Canon PowerShot G9 X. Once you've pressed this, the name of the network you need to connect to from your smartphone or tablet will be displayed. Once connected, launch Canon's free Camera Window app and you can use your phone to take pictures, or download images already on the camera. There's a good degree of control you can take over what you can shoot, including aperture, zoom length, ISO, flash function, autofocus point and so on, which is nice to see.

It's worth investing in a high speed Class 10 SD card to use with the G9 X as otherwise shot to shot times can be frustratingly slow (when using a Class 4 card for example). With a class 10, there's still a couple of seconds to wait before you can take another shot, but it shouldn't be a problem for most every day shooting scenarios.

Focusing speeds are generally quick. The Canon PowerShot G9 X will hunt a little in lower light scenarios, but it's rare for a false positive to be presented. You can also get impressively close when macro focusing is activated for frame filling shots.

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this review were taken using the 20 megapixel SuperFine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 8Mb.

With the same sensor as the GX7, we had fairly high hopes for the Canon PowerShot G9 X, and happily once again the camera doesn't disappoint.

Images directly from the camera are characterised with the same warm tones that we have come to expect from Canon cameras. At the moment, it's not possible to open raw format files in Adobe Camera Raw, but you can download Digital Photo Professional for free from Canon's website if you want to work those files.

Colours in the raw files are slightly more muted, which gives you good scope for working with them in post production.

Noise is apparent from around ISO 400, where you can see noise appearing in some parts of the image if you look at 100% on screen. The overall impression of detail is good right the way up to around ISO 6400, whereupon images start to have a painterly, smudgy effect.

Automatic white balance copes well the majority of the time to produce accurately coloured shots, even when faced with artificial lighting conditions. Similarly, general-purpose metering copes well with all but extremely high contrast scenes to produce well exposed images most of the time.

With a relatively limited focal length range, you don't have too much scope for zooming. Images taken at the 3x optical zoom display a good level of detail, while if you push it to the digital zoom, you'll see a noticeable drop in image quality, but images are still usable at small sizes - so it's handy to have available if you really need it. There is a second digital zoom available, but this is only really recommended for use if you're particularly desperate to zoom further.

Noise

There are 8 ISO settings available on the Canon PowerShot G9 X. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each ISO setting for both JPEG and RAW formats.

JPEG	RAW
ISO 125 (100% Crop)	ISO 125 (100% Crop)
ISO 200 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)
ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 400 (100% Crop)
ISO 800 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)
ISO 1600 (100% Crop)	ISO 1600 (100% Crop)
ISO 3200 (100% Crop)	ISO 3200 (100% Crop)
ISO 6400 (100% Crop)	ISO 6400 (100% Crop)
ISO 12800 (100% Crop)	ISO 12800 (100% Crop)

Focal Range

The Canon PowerShot G9 X's 3x zoom lens offers a focal range of 28-84mm, as illustrated by these examples:

28mm	84mm

Sharpening

Here are two 100% crops which have been Saved as Web - Quality 50 in Photoshop. The right-hand image has had some sharpening applied in Photoshop. The out-of-the camera images are a little soft at the default sharpening setting. You can change the in-camera sharpening level if you don't like the default look.

Original (100% Crop)	Sharpened (100% Crop)

Chromatic Aberrations

The Canon PowerShot G9 X handled chromatic aberrations well during the review, with fairly limited purple fringing present around the edges of objects in high-contrast situations, as shown in the examples below.

Chromatic Aberrations 1 (100% Crop)	Chromatic Aberrations 2 (100% Crop)

Macro

The Canon PowerShot G9 X has a good macro mode that allows you to focus on a subject that is 5cm away from the camera. The first image shows how close you can get to the subject (in this case a compact flash card). The second image is a 100% crop.

Macro	Macro (100% Crop)

Flash

The flash settings on the Canon Powershot G9 X are Auto, On, Auto Red-eye Reduction, Slow Synchro and Off. These shots of a white coloured wall were taken at a distance of 1.5m.

Flash Off - Wide Angle (24mm)	Flash On - Wide Angle (24mm)
Flash Off - Telephoto (100mm)	Flash On - Telephoto (100mm)

And here are some portrait shots.

Flash Off	Flash Off (100% Crop)
Flash On	Flash On (100% Crop)

Night

The Canon Powershot G9 X's maximum shutter speed is 30 seconds and there's a Bulb mode too, which is great news if you're seriously interested in night photography. The shot below was taken using a shutter speed of 30 seconds at ISO 125.

Night	Night (100% Crop)

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Canon PowerShot G9 X camera, which were all taken using the 20 megapixel SuperFine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample RAW Images

The Canon PowerShot G9 X enables users to capture RAW and JPEG format files. We've provided some Canon RAW (CR2) samples for you to download (thumbnail images shown below are not 100% representative).

Sample Movie & Video

Product Images

Front of the Canon PowerShot G9 X

Front of the Canon PowerShot G9 X / Lens Extended

Front of the Canon PowerShot G9 X / Pop-up Flash

Side of the Canon PowerShot G9 X

Side of the Canon PowerShot G9 X

Rear of the Canon PowerShot G9 X / Turned On

Rear of the Canon PowerShot G9 X / Quick Menu

Rear of the Canon PowerShot G9 X / Main Menu

Rear of the Canon PowerShot G9 X / Image Displayed

Top of the Canon PowerShot G9 X

Bottom of the Canon PowerShot G9 X

Side of the Canon PowerShot G9 X

Side of the Canon PowerShot G9 X

Front of the Canon PowerShot G9 X

Front of the Canon PowerShot G9 X

Battery Compartment

Conclusion

Once again Canon has produced a very appealing compact camera for those looking for something which is pocket friendly but retains many of the high quality features which something bigger and more advanced has.

The fact that the Canon PowerShot G9 X uses the same sensor as the highly praised G7 X is good news. A one-inch sensor in something so small and neat is not easily achieved however, and as such there is a compromise in the focal length of the lens. However, the 3x optical zoom gives you a little bit of flexibility, and is enough for landscapes, portraits and macro subjects.

Ideal for those who already have some experience with using advanced modes, such as aperture priority, there's also a good auto mode which beginners will also find appealing. The Creative Shot and Hybrid Auto is also likely to find favour with such an audience.

Using the Canon PowerShot G9 X's inbuilt Wi-Fi is quick and easy, and gives you a work around for the fact that, unlike the G7 X, the G9 X does not have a tilting or articulating screen which you can use for self-portraits and the like.

Talking of the screen, it's nice and responsive, but if you're of the mindset that buttons are better than it will probably take some convincing that the G9 X is for you as almost all of the operation takes place via the touchscreen - with some options not available via any other means.

Image quality is great - as expected - but the overall experience suffers a little in comparison with the G7 X as the lens has a wider overall aperture range. If therefore you find yourself often shooting in low light situations, then the G7 X may be a better option.

For the moment at least, you can actually pick up the G7 X for slightly less than the G9 X. The Canon PowerShot G9 X is more appealing if you're looking for something extremely small, but otherwise, until the price drops, again it might be the G7 X which wins out...

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	5
Features	4.5
Ease-of-use	4
Image quality	4.5
Value for money	4

Main Rivals

Listed below are some of the rivals of the Canon PowerShot G9 X.

Specifications

Your Comments