by WFG
(Colorado)
I honestly don't remember exactly when I purchased this camera, but I am pretty sure it was around 1999 or 2000. I was looking for something good, that could use my existing Canon hot shoe flashes, and had a good MP rating.
The G1 was what I chose because it had the capability of using the hot shoe flashes I owned for my film SLR's. In addition, it had a lot more manual (to me you can spell that photographer controlled) capability than most small digital cameras at the time.
I really enjoyed the camera, and I can tell you it still works today. It is of course out dated, but still can be used in a pinch. The other very useful thing about this camera to me, was the swivel live digital view.
A great camera? Certainly not by today's standards, however, in it's day it was a pretty nice starter camera for me.
The Canon G1 was, and clearly still is, a great camera.
As 'WFG' has already mentioned it had a hot shoe. This meant that not only could photographers who already owned flashguns continue to make use of them, but it also allowed anyone to attach a flashgun.
Why is this important? An indoor photo taken with a half-decent flashgun will always look better than a photo taken with the camera's built in flash.
Another neat feature of the G1 was its ability to take photos in RAW format. This meant the camera didn't compress the image into a JPEG (with the resulting loss of quality). RAW images almost always look better than JPEGs.
Thanks for the submission,
Darrell.