Canon G16 review

Canon's workhouse G series premium compact gets refreshed

Canon PowerShot G16 review
The Canon PowerShot G16 improves on the G15

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Canon G16 review

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The G16's automatic white balance does a good job of producing accurate colours in mixed lighting conditions, but metering has struggled slightly here, making the subject slightly underexposed.

Canon G16 review

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The G16's maximum aperture if f/1.8, making it ideal for use when shooting portrait images.

Canon G16 review

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Colours straight from the G16 are bright and punchy, with a good level of saturation and accuracy in subjects such as skies.

Canon G16 review

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At its widest point, the G16 offers an equivalent of 28mm, making it ideal for capturing a good variety of subjects. Canon's S120 goes slightly wider at 24mm, though.

Canon G16 review

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Here, despite the high-contrast nature of the scene, chromatic aberration isn't visible even when zooming in at 100%. There is a fractional amount of fringing, but it's not noticeable at normal printing and web sizes.

Canon G16 review

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The G16 features 5x optical zoom. Here's a picture shot at the widest point of the lens - 28mm equivalent.

Canon G16 review

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This image was shot at the telephoto end of the optic, which offers an equivalent of 140mm. Impressively, even at this far reach of the telephoto optic, the lens is still able to stop down to f/2.8.

Canon G16 review

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Canon's ZoomPlus technology is available to boost the zoom's capability up to 10x. Detail is retained impressively well here, making it a viable option if you do need that extra bit of reach.

Canon G16 review

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Standard digital zoom is also available, to push the zoom capability up to 20x. There's less detail here, but again, if you really need to get closer it's a nice option to have, especially if you're only sharing images online.

Canon G16 review

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The G16's macro focusing capability allows you to get very close to the subject to fill the frame with detail rich close-ups.

Canon G16 review

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The G16's f/1.8 aperture allows you to get creative with shallow depth of field effects.

Canon G16 review

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Shooting at mid-range apertures, such as f/8 allows us to determine the sharpness of the camera's lens. Here we can see that the image is reasonably sharp throughout the image, with some evidence of loss of detail in the corners when zooming at 100%. At normal printing and web sizes however, detail is kept well.

Digital filters

A number of digital filters are available to use on the G16, accessible via a dedicated mode.

Filters are as follows:

Canon G16 review

HDR

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Canon G16 review

Nostalgic

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Canon G16 review

Fish-eye Effect

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Canon G16 review

Miniature Effect

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Canon G16 review

Toy Camera Effect (standard)

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Canon G16 review

Toy Camera Effect (warm)

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Canon G16 review

Toy Camera Effect (cool)

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Canon G16 review

Soft Focus

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Canon G16 review

Monochrome

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Canon G16 review

Super Vivid

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Canon G16 review

Poster Effect

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Amy Davies

Amy has been writing about cameras, photography and associated tech since 2009. Amy was once part of the photography testing team for Future Publishing working across TechRadar, Digital Camera, PhotoPlus, N Photo and Photography Week. For her photography, she has won awards and has been exhibited. She often partakes in unusual projects - including one intense year where she used a different camera every single day. Amy is currently the Features Editor at Amateur Photographer magazine, and in her increasingly little spare time works across a number of high-profile publications including Wired, Stuff, Digital Camera World, Expert Reviews, and just a little off-tangent, PetsRadar.