Camera Electronic: Touring With The Canon PowerShot G5X

You and I might be entirely different tourists - you might think sleeping in a hoochie every night surrounded by wild animals and incipient disease is just peachy - I will look for the greatest comfort my money can buy. Me and four-star hotels is friends.

With our travel pictures we might be at different poles - you with a giant DSLR and enormous lenses taking 55 megabyte RAW images of steaming landscapes and me with a hand-sized tourist camera taking hot rod shots.

Well today's camera won't be for you - you need the Canon EOS 5Ds or EOS 5DsR and some "L" class glass. Good luck hauling them up the montain. I'm going to charge up the battery on the Canon PowerShot G5X and head for the show.

What do I get for my money? I get a 1" CMOS sensor - and a swivelling rear screen and a proper electronic view finder. I get an f:1.8-2,8 lens with a 4.2X zoom range. It starts out at the 35mm equivalent point of view of a 24mm lens, so it is quite wide. As it finishes up at about the equivalent of a 100mm view I know I can take tourist portraits with it.

I've got a 3" rear screen that swivels for waist-level viewing and a standardised Canon-fitting hot shoe. I've got ready control access for apertures and shutter speeds in manual mode and as many of the auto and program modes as I can deal with for other times. It'll shoot multiple shots in sequence at low or high speed, if that is any help. As the things I shoot don't move, for me it is no help.

There's a tiny built-in flash that is not occluded by the lens when it is in the taking position. The little tube is just perfect for macro and close-up.

If I don't want to plug and unplug cards I can transfer files via WiFi.

And the best feature - the ergonomics of it are right. That and the styling and build quality. It fits my hand and eye and is hefty enough to assure me that it will not unwind like a ball of string with travel jolts It is metal. It is not so big as to attract the thief nor so small as to get lost in the luggage.

In short - along with similar offerings from other manufacturers, it is a perfect set of compromises for the traveller. I'll bring back record shots, blog images, and A4 album shots with ease.

Here's the camera in action: