Sony’s R1 gets refined seven years later by Canon

Posted by Kurt on January 10, 2012 in Jottings

Canon re-invents the Sony R1 seven years later, (mouse over image to see R1).  Sony came out with the fixed lens, large sensor R1 in 2005 with a lot of fanfare.  Unfortunately, the trend at that time was low-priced DSLRs.  The R1 was a great idea, at the wrong time.  Canon is trying the GX1 at the right time, with the trend solidly going to DSLR quality, in a much smaller package.

In my opinion, the Canon G1 X is the future of consumer cameras, that is, small, light-weight, using a large sensor and fixed zoom lens with image quality the same as larger DSLRs.  Who wants to carry around a heavy camera all day with two or three lenses, especially on vacation?  Not me, I’m not even using my A900 anymore for non-business use, it’s too inconvenient.

The NEX cameras (and for that matter most mirrorless cameras) are very good, but you have to buy lenses, and those lenses tend to be large and expensive.

The new Canon G1 X seems (on paper at least) to be the perfect compromise of quality and convenience.  It has a large sensor with a crop factor of 1.85x, and the built-in lens has a nice focal range of 28-112mm in full frame terms.  There’s a hotshoe, pop up flash, three stop ND filter, top-plate ±3 exposure compensation, and an articulating VGA screen just to name a few things, some of which consumer DSLRs or mirrorless cameras don’t normally have.   The trade-off is no phase detect focusing, slightly heavy at 534g, (or over 1 pound), and slow continuous shooting.

I’d prefer a slightly faster lens with a 24mm starting point, like a 24-75mm F/2.8, but that might make the camera too big.

Anyways, if the lens quality and focusing is good, I’d use something like this way more than a DSLR or even a NEX.

Tags: Canon G1 X