So last wednesday I headed out for my first backcountry ski tour of the season. I was planning an 8 mile tour with about 1000 feet of climbing, so I dispensed with my 30D and 24-70 L lens. Instead, I packed my cute little compact G9 digicam. It was light and easy.

I headed out and began taking pictures after about 30 minutes of climbing. I might have started taking pics more because I was tired and less because there was anything inspiring. But, the first major snow of a season is always pretty inspiring, and as I spent more time and gained more elevation, I found myself stopping frequently to whip-out my easy little camera. By the time I reached the top of the mountain, I had taken hundreds of shots. I was having a lot of fun with the little camera.

When I got home, I downloaded the images and started parsing through them. The problem started when I realized that I shot mostly jpeg instead of raw. Typically, I shoot raw with this little camera, but because of the day's bright snowy conditions, I decided to shoot aperture priority. I didn't realize that you had to set the file output type for every mode. Oops.

So I start working on the images...stitching panoramas. I was exceedingly unhappy with the images. Between flaky white balance and poor dynamic range in the brightly lit snowy conditions, I was really irritated. I know I can deal with the white balance by shooting raw the next time, but the lack of dynamic range really annoyed me. I also found that the sharpness and detail was far inferior to my 30D. It isn't a subtle difference to me. I was really disappointed.

I guess I have become spoiled. Before I had the 30D, I used a Pro-1 and was pretty satisfied with the image quality out of it. I am not sure if I can ever really go back. The sharpness, color and dynamic range of the DSLR has ruined me forever. I will certainly take the G9 out when I really need to go light, but I will never have the expectation of getting many truly great shots with it.

Best shot of the day.

How much of your unhappiness is due to your accidentally shooting jpegs? It may be that the comparison you're making with the 30D (with which I assume you shoot in raw) isn't fair.

Jeremy