Canon's 4-Megapixel Powershot G2

It's kind of ironic to see a release for a camera without a picture of the camera but so it goes. If you're a digital photography buff, you're probably more interested in the thing's capabilities than its external beauty anyway. Canon just introduce the 4-megapixel PowerShot G2, which will be available September at a suggested list price of $999. The design of the Canon PowerShot G2 is based on the PowerShot G1 , but with a champagne metallic coverplate and an enlarged handgrip (an obvious attempt to describe it without a picture available). The G2 gives you a 7-21mm f/2.0-2.5 zoom lens (equivalent to 34-102mm in the 35mm format), a Vari-Angle LCD viewfinder, a conventional camera body design, a plug-and-play USB interface, compatibility with Canon EX-series Speedlite flash units, and compatibility with Type I and II CompactFlash memory cards, including IBM's series of Microdrives. Using it, you can produce full-color images up to 2272 x 1704 pixels with additional resolution settings of 1600 x 1200, 1024 x 768 and 640 x 480. You also get to choose between 13 image quality settings including three JPEG compression modes (Superfine, Fine and Normal) at any resolution. The G2 features Canon's RAW mode for control over image attributes like white balance, contrast, sharpness, saturation, and bit depth. In addition to the normal continuous shooting mode, which lets you digitally capture 1.5 frames per second for up to 9 frames in Large/Fine mode, the G2 also offers a high-speed continuous mode. When high-speed continuous mode is selected, pictures can be shot continuously at 2.5 frames per second for up to 5 frames in Large/Fine mode. The PowerShot G2 kit includes a 32MB CompactFlash card, BP-511 Lithium-Ion rechargeable battery, CA-560 compact power adapter with AC Cable, USB interface cable, AV cable, wireless remote controller, neck strap, and miscellaneous bundled software. For just under a thousand dollars, you can go out and shoot something (digitally, that is).