Canon G10 - Excellent Camera... but make sure yours is free from defects...

Already bought your new Canon G10 or thinking of acquiring one soon? The new Canon G10 is an excellent all round pocket sized camera which offers great built and functions. But just make sure you don't get a lemon. Canon quality control quite frankly is not up to standard. Especially lately with the rush to manufacture enough cameras to satisfy demand, some lapses in QC is bound to occur. Read my opinion on Canon Camera Quality Control below in the previous post. In this post however, I'll show you what I found in two Canon G10 cameras which I bought from a large local camera dealer. I'll also show you what to look out for when your buying your new Canon G10.

This is what I found On the 1st Canon G10
Defective Imaging Sensor....

The first picture above is the "complete picture" while the second is the 100% crop. The cropped image is the upper left side of the frame which clearly shows a defect in the sensor. This line occurs at the same place in every frame.

I'm surprised Canon QC let this sensor be put into a camera in the first place. It really goes to show their level of quality control or lack thereof. Lets face it, Canon makes great imaging sensors but this one should never have left the the Fab plant.

On the 2nd Canon G10, we find...

Blurry Viewfinder

This defect occurs as a blurry horizontal line across the viewfinder slightly above the middle line. The blurry band gets bigger as you zoom in using the optical zoom switch located below the shutter release. Again I'm suprised Canon quality control didn't pick it up. Did they even look through the finder before passing it in QC? ...assuming there was some if any QC to begin with.


The G10 Still Trounces the Competition

Manufacturing defects aside, the new Canon G10 continues a long line of the very successful Canon G Series of Powershot cameras. With the latest iteration, the G10 in my opinion beats the competition not just in terms of overall image quality but also for built quality and feature set. Competition takes the form of the Nikon P6000 and the Panasonic Lumix LX3.

The Canon G10 is definitely a good all round pocket camera. My own shooting experience concures with the reviews. Moreover I really enjoy using my new G10. Its got good camera controls, is solidly built and gives exceptional image quality, especially at base ISO (ISO 80).

Learn to check for manufacturing defects though and buy from a reputable dealer who will let you swap defective cameras and you should be fine. Most of all, get to know you Canon G10 in order to get the most out of it. The terrific images you get from it will be worth your time.

For in depth reviews and feature for feature comparisons and discussions and more test shots and sample photos, see dpreview.com & Dcresource.com.

Dans-Imaging

Customer Centered Quality Control CCQC - The Canon Approach

When we think of Quality Control (QC), we usually think it refers to a manufacturer taking steps to ensure products produced perform according to specification or are otherwise up to standard before they leave the factory. QC is also performed to identify faulty products or batches of products so they can be fixed before it reaches the customer.

Canon on the other hand, seems to think that QC is too expensive or time consuming and therefore leaves it to the Customer to do the testing. And if the customer does find something wrong with their product, let customer service and the local Canon repair facility deal with it. Say for every quantity of 100 L lenses Canon sells, say on 10 customers identify problems, only those 10 lenses get fixed or replaced. Canon saves lots of money by not having to do any QC at all. Makes sense doesn't it?

I suspect Canon simply calibrates its machinery to run a batch of say 20,000 of their EF 70-200mm f2.8 L IS USM lenses and after checking that the first few lenses are produced okay, they let 'em run. Canon has publicly said that to control costs, they produce enough of their lenses for 1 year's supply.

When I first read about problems with their professional lenses here , and here. I thought that it must be rare. Authors of those posts must be blowing things out of proportion. I can't be that bad, or can it?

While Nikon powers on with its string of successes with success as defined in giving customers what they want, Canon has gone on by giving us mediocre bodies (poor 9pt AF, poorer built) and more mega-pixels with correspondingly more noise.

And what do I have by way of proof that Canon really has no effective QC or no QC at all? Over the next few days, I'll be doing a write up of tests done on a brand new out of the box Canon EF 70-200mm 2.8 L IS USM lens and the brand new Canon G10. Both of which I bought. There'll be advice on how to test lenses and what to look out for. Stay tuned.