A WIDE-EYED POWERSHOT G11

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If you landed on this page looking for a review of the G11 you won’t find any. There are more than enough opinions on the web about how good or bad the camera is. When I am not working with the 5D Mk II, I’m having fun with the Powershot G11. When I say fun, I mean FUN where clearly the G11’s design, form factor, versatility set it apart from its professional sibling. Heck, the G11 even sets itself apart from other Canon digital compact models. I won’t go into details why this is so but suffice to say it has something to do with the fact that it’s got a Tilt / Swivel LCD where this design alone changed my once rather myopic view of point-and-shoot cameras especially when I found just how incredibly convenient it is to compose when shooting self-portraits.

The series of G11 pictures was shot with the EOS 20D on the UWA EFs 10-22mm lens lit by flourescent desk lamp to get this colour temperature effect.

It was during the Taiwan trip where the convenience dawned on me especially after seeing a friend repeatedly point-and-hope with his camera. More manufacturers should embrace this—guess I’m not the only one with myopic vision! Pictured here is my G11 with an OH MY GOD huge 82mm High Definition Ultra Wide Angle and Macro lens conversion. At 82mm thread size, this makes this lens the biggest in my inventory—my L lenses maxed 77mm and the only thing that would match that would be if I bought the EF 16-35mm Mk II f/2.8 some day.

This is no exaggerated view of the UWA lens. The thread size is 82mm so that would be fairly huge even when a lens this size is used on a dSLR body.

Not obvious in the above pictures is the inclusion of a Macro lens that’s part of the ultra wide angle ensemble. The last two photos of the 82mm lens and beads are macro examples from this setup.

The 58mm adapter seen here (the tube segment nearest to camera) isn’t part of the conversion kit but the shop I got it at supplies them.

At 0.45X conversion the G11’s native wide angle of 28mm becomes 12.6mm and this is what it looks like when it’s fully zoomed out. I think 12.6mm is the view minus the solid vignetting.

A shot of the 82mm lens curvature shot using the supplied macro component