Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

1. Background info: I am not a Canon user (but I have nothing against Canon products), I've shot with film for many years (Contax), and digitally for the past 4+ years (Sony 828, Sony V3, Sony R1). 2. I was very interested in the G9 when it was recently announced because of the great reputation of the Canon G series and most importantly--> the return of the RAW format in the G9. Furthermore, everything on paper completely outshined my ancient Sony V3; a very good camera but very very slow... and with limited zoom range etc... 3. Thus it was very dissapointing when I had to return the Canon G9 after several days of testing. Here were my impressions of the camera. a. Build Quality: Good b. Size: Good; actually smaller than my V3. c. Performance: excellent--> RAW write times were impressively fast (for a point and shoot). d. LCD: completely terrible. This is supposed to be the state of the art LCD (3 inch), but there was an overt cool /bluish color cast. I tried every suggested variable (via Canon Tech and various on the forums), I went to a local camera store to try another G9 (same problem), and my observations were also confirmed via numerous folks on the web. Some suggested that I just ignore the color cast and just use the LCD for framing and for checking basic exposure--initially a resonable argument but then when you logically think about it--> why should anyone put up with an overt color cast (and also an overly contrasty) image on the LCD, in a supposed top of the line point and shoot camera, from an industry leader like Canon? It just doesn't make sense. I mean, a $200.00 cheap 5 MP camera has better color rendition on the LCD than this G9. e. Even with the above LCD issues, I was still going to keep it if it weren't for the only "ok" image results. I did some basic testing comparing the G9 vs Sony V3 (real old camera)--> all shot in RAW, all shot via Tripod, all shot using calibrated gray card etc... Bottomline, the G9 images were good and I'm sure that people will be able to get nice shots from this camera--> but when / if you actually compare it to something like the Sony V3 (which again is an old camera)--> the Sony consistently just produces more sharper images. 4. Thus each person will have to decide what's important to them in regards to their photographic needs / wants / goals etc... For me, it's always image quality and thus I had to return the G9. All around a decent camera that could and should have been a lot better. For now, I'll continue using the Sony V3 and episodically be frustrated with the slow performance, but at least the image quality will be excellent.