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It is 10x7x4.5cm this last figure the width can increase by up to another 4cm when the lens is fully zoomed. It weights a chunky 400grams.

Having recently looked at a couple of very powerful units I was concerned that going back to a basic digital camera would be something of a culture shock. However this powerful unit was a very enjoyable experience. Some might even put this on a par with a DSLR.

The rear of the unit is dominated by the 6x4.5cm TFT display. Joy of joys for anyone who comes from a 35mm background it has a very nice viewfinder with three well labelled buttons in line. To the right of the TFT are four more buttons the ubiquitous five position joystick with a rotating outer ring for added controls.

See also: Digital Cameras

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The right side has a door covering A/V out power in and Digital. The base has the tripod screw and the solid battery and SD card slot covered by a sliding door. The left side has only the anchor point for the neck strap. The front has a slight indentation to allow the right hand to hold while the flash is mounted a minimum of 2cm above and to the right of the lens.

This leaves the top from left to right a white balance wheel, external flash shoe, nine position selector wheel with sensitivity wheel around its edge the on/off button with the shutter release with zoom/wide angle toggle around the outside. However before the novice recoils in pain sticking the sensitivity on auto along with the selector will give you some rather good results and you can then grow into the camera.

The possible image sizes are 4416x3312 called L. 3456x2592 called M1. 2592x1944 called M2. 1600x1200 called M3. 640x480 called S and 4416x2480 called W. these are 14.7MP, 9MP, 5MP, 2MP, VGA and widescreen. There are three compression modes superfine, fine and normal giving 18 possible ways of filling whatever SD card you insert. This unit also supports RAW.

Of course any modern digital camera allows you to capture video this can capture 640x480 or 320x240 both at 30FPS.

It is unusual to be able to change white balance and shooting speed without going into the menu structure and this again gives power to the experienced user.

I enjoyed my time with this unit and the clarity and depth of the images I took proved the ability of the unit. For anyone wanting to print A4 images the M2 settings gives more than enough to print these images. However if your SD card is capacious then shoot at the full resolution and just see how little of the image you can zoom into to still get a perfectly acceptable A4 image.

You of course have image stabilization an anti blur facility twenty six shooting modes and even some decent face detection technology. Make yourself salivate and study the second link below. This is very powerful camera and if you do not want to carry several lenses around this is the next best thing.

Doing my Internet searches found the Canon PowerShot G10 at a best price of £357.90 including free delivery from Amazon on the first link below, considering the Canon price is £569 that's over £200 off.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001FWYT9K?ie=UTF8&tag=gadge0a-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634

Information from Canon available on the following link:

http://www.canon.co.uk/For_Home/Product_Finder/Cameras/Digital_Camera/PowerShot/PowerShot_G10/