Salt Lake City

November 8th, 2012 Posted by mikepadua

The Canon PowerShot G5. An archaic, small-sensor digital camera (before I knew, or cared, what a small-sensor digital camera was) that, looking back, had a lot of shortcomings. It was slow. The sensor, at 5 megapixels, was considered far too “pixel dense” at the time, and many people complained of chromatic aberrations and purple fringing. But it had a few things really going for it. Mainly, the thing shot pictures in RAW format. I decided I’d bring RAW files into the latest version of Lightroom (4.2 as of this writing) to see what I could pull out of the files.

It is interesting to see how much information was in these files, and to see how improved software can bring a lot out of them but it’s even more interesting to see how personal tastes in post production change, too. I’m glad I was shooting RAW back then–there’s a lot in these pictures that I just didn’t see those many years ago. For you EXIF peepers, the image dates state 2011, but these pictures were taken in June of 2004, and I sold the G5 to fund a purchase of my first digital SLR back in 2005 (a Canon EOS Rebel XT).