Canon G11 Review - Exposure - Imaging Resource

Sharpness & DetailSharp, detailed images overall, with only minor edge-enhancement on high-contrast subjects. Noise suppression limits definition in low contrast areas, even at relatively low ISO settings.

Good definition of high-contrast elements, with only minor edge enhancement.	Subtle detail: HairNoise suppression blursdetail in areas of subtle contrast, as in the darker parts of hair here.

Sharpness. The Canon PowerShot G11 captures very good detail and reasonably sharp JPEG images. Slight enhancement artifacts are visible on high-contrast subjects such as the crop above left. Edge enhancement creates the illusion of sharpness by enhancing colors and tones right at the edge of a rapid transition in color or tone.

Detail. The crop above right shows moderate noise suppression, as the low contrast areas of hair show less distinct detail. Many individual strands remain fairly well defined, but the PowerShot G11's handling of subtle detail at low ISOs isn't notably improved over that of the earlier G10, despite its larger sensor pixels. Noise-suppression systems in digital cameras tend to flatten-out detail in areas of subtle contrast. The effects can often be seen in shots of human hair, where the individual strands are lost and an almost "watercolor" look appears.

RAW vs In-Camera JPEGsAs noted above, the Canon G11 produces fairly sharp, detailed in-camera JPEGs. We saw quite a bit more detail on the strongly contrasting geometric patterns of our resolution target when we converted images from RAW files using Adobe's Camera Raw plugin for Photoshop. In the natural image below, though, processing from RAW brought relatively little improvement in visible detail. Take a look below, to see what we mean:

Camera JPEG(Fine)	RAW via Canon DPP (default settings)	RAW via ACR (USM=500%, R=0.3)

In the table above, mousing over a link at the bottom will load the corresponding crop in the area above, and clicking on the link will load the full resolution image. Canon's Digital Photo Professional (version 3.7.1.1) software was able to extract slightly more detail, as was Adobe Camera Raw 5.5, though they both produced more sharpening artifacts than the camera's default settings, and neither resulted in the sort of dramatic improvement we see with some cameras. For ACR converted RAW files, we found that Canon G11 files required strong but tight sharpening. We used Photoshop to sharpen, with USM of 500% and Radius of 0.3 pixels.