The March Of G

Like Sony, Canon too is upgrading their premium G series advance compact camera line-up, based on the 1-inch sensor. Shridhar Kunte reviews the Canon G5 X Mark II.

Canon’s new camera is built around a completely new ‘stacked’ CMOS sensor, and a medium-size 1-inch CMOS sensor. The overall area, however, is nowhere close to an APS-C sized sensor found in Canon and Nikon DSLRs, and is smaller than the MFT sensor. It will be interesting to see whether the overall performance of this camera comes close to the mirrorless cameras with micro four-thirds sensors.

Features

The G5 X Mark II is based on a 20.1MP 1-inch CMOS sensor, uses a stacked design, and couples with the DIGIC 8 image processor to comprehend faster autofocus performance. It also features up to 20fps continuous shooting, a 30fps RAW Burst mode, and UHD 4K 30p and Full HD 120p video recording. The camera sports a slender design and comes equipped with a 3-inch 1.04 million dot touchscreen LCD display. There is also a pop-up EVF with a 2.36 million dot resolution, for sharp and clear eye-level viewing.

The in-built 5x zoom lens has a focal length which is a 35mm equivalent of 24–120mm. It has a maximum aperture of f/1.8 at 24mm, that narrows down to f/2.8 by 120mm. The lens has been constructed using ultra-high refractive index aspherical elements for extreme quality. It also includes an integrated three-stop ND filter that allows you to shoot at slower speeds or even at wide-open apertures in brighter conditions. Moreover, the lens offers image stabilization up to four stops.

The G5 X Mark II comes with all the usual scene modes that are generally found on compact cameras. But apart from this, there are star shooting modes for astrophotography lovers and can be used to capture photos and videos of the night time sky with enhanced brilliance and clarity. The modes, Star Nightscape, Star Trails and Star Time-Lapse Movies can be recorded using the auto or manual settings.