Lately, I’ve been on a mission to find a small camera to bring with me on travels and walks. One that is not heavy as my big DSLR camera, and that can take better photos than the iPhone.
I always end up just taking my iPhone when I’m on the go, and leaving the Canon EOS Mark 5 at home because let’s be real; it’s super heavy. With a large lens attached it can easily weigh 1,5kg!
But when I come back home from a trip or walk, and look at the photos I took, I almost always regret that decision because I wish the photos were better.
And even though I’ve been practicing hard on taking decent iPhone photos, they are never going to be as good as the high quality DSLR images.
So I thought; why not find a small compact camera that can do better than the iPhone and get closer to the image quality of a DSLR photo? And at the same time I can take it with me everywhere without being concerned about it being clumsy or heavy to carry.
Also, when I’m at a public location with people around I don’t want the attention of me swinging that big camera around. Especially not if I also have my dogs with me, which can be pretty chaotic sometimes when trying to take a picture and holding them at the same time.
I just want to go unnoticed, preferably with a tiny + silent camera which I can discretly slide out of my pocket without anyone noticing.
On this mission to find this small miracle camera, I decided to test some of my older cameras that I’ve had for some years and I hardly never use.
Today, the focus is on the Canon G7X Mark ii which was first released in 2016. It’s a tiny point-and-shoot camera no bigger than my hand. It weighs about 300 grams and comes with a 24–100 mm (4.2×) f/1.8–2.8 zoom lens.
I originally bought the Canon G7X Mark ii camera for the pure purpose of using it for video, filming tutorials, behind the scenes stuff and vlogging. I wanted something super simple and this was it. The footage that comes out of it is so good I don’t have to edit it, nor colorgrade it, which makes my workflow super fast.
Actually, I loved it so much I bought one more of the exact same model, simply to be able to film the same scene but from two different directions. I’ve been very pleased with this setup.
The funny thing is, that even though I’ve had these two Canon G7X Mark ii cameras for some years I’ve never taken a photo with any of them! Until now!
I don’t want to give you a traditional camera review with all the technical specs, you can read about that in so many other blog posts or see it on Canons own homepage. Instead I want to show you the images, so you can see for yourself.
In my personal and professional opinion (and this is not sponsored), I find the Canon G7X Mark ii camera to be a nice camera for the price. The photos in this post is simply shot with automode and then edited on my iPhone.
Why? Because I want a clever, fast, and easy to use camera that I can quickly pull out and snap away with. Often I only have a second to snap that photo and I don’t want to play around with the camera settings when I’m on the move with my dogs or if I’m in a crowded location.
It feels like the Canon G7X is quicker to use than the iPhone. With the iPhone I often have to put a little more effort into getting the light right, setting the focus and exposing the scene correctly. With the Canon G7X I just turn it on and tap my finger on the screen exactly where I want the focus to be, and as I tap to focus it takes the photo immediately – I only have to tap one time!
Compared to the photos I can take with my iPhone camera the Canon G7X image quality is better. I love the depth of field and the softness with Canon which is hard to create with iPhone.
It is possible to add softness in photos taken with the iPhone camera, but then I have to go into settings and use the portrait mode, and adjust further – perhaps adding more softness in editing as well. Often I need to take some test shots until I get something I like, which also takes time.
Also, the white balance and colors are much better straight out of the Canon G7X camera compared to iPhone. And therefore the photos are faster and easier to edit.
That being said, the photo quality is not as good as when I compare to my Canon EOS Mark 5 dslr camera, but I didn’t expect than anyway.
This is definitely a camera that I will be using much more in the future, and explore as a small compact travel camera.
The only downside I can find with this camera is that I don’t like the look so much for still life. It performs fantastic for interior, travel, nature, landscape, portraits but for those closeup still photos that I love it lacks something that is hard to explain. It’s something to do with the dimmensions and size difference between the objects.
But since I will be using my big DSLR for still life at home in my studio, I don’t need the Canon G7X Mark ii mark to perform well in this area. What matters is how it performs when I’m travelling, hiking with my dogs, at an event, or biking around the city. For those situations I think it’s close to being the perfect camera.
I’m still on a mission to see if I can find a camera that can do even better that the Canon G7X Mark ii and you’ll be the first to know, if and when that happens 🙂
Happy beautiful day lovelies.