Canon PowerShot G11 Announced

Among a series of new PowerShot point and shoots, Canon announced the PowerShot G11, the replacement for the venerable PowerShot G10. The G10 was in many ways the Point and Shoot pros choose as a handy camera to carry instead of their SLR and the G11 looks to make it even sweeter.

The most obvious change to the G10 is the inclusion of an articulated LCD. Something I’m quite pleased with, especially since the G11 retains the optical viewfinder, making it a very clean camera for street photography or anytime you wish not to have a bright display shining in your face.

The best part, in my opinion, is the 4MP drop in resolution. Yes, you heard that right, the PowerShot G11 is lower resolution than the G10. The upside of this is real ISOs from 80 to 3200 from the sensor and no binned small picture ISO3200 mode. The other upside is coupled with the larger pixels and ever present advancements in sensor design, images from the G11 should be even cleaner than images from its predecessor.

Standard for the G series PowerShots, it retains the hot shoe allows the use of an external Canon Speedlite. The G11 also retains the relatively fast 6.1-30.5mm (28-140mm 35mm film equivalent) f/2.8-4.5 image stabilized lens.

The one thing that’s conspicuously missing is the ability to record high definition video. The PowerShot G11 only offers options for recording 320×240 and 640×480 clips, both at 30 FPS, up to an hour long.

The PowerShot G11 looks like a promising product from Canon for those looking for a high end point and shoot with very good IQ.

The Canon PowerShot G11 product page.

A copy of the announcement and press release is available from DPReview.

Images of the PowerShot G11 courtesy of Canon USA.