Canon G5X Exposure

Saturation & Hue Accuracy
Typical saturation levels with good overall hue accuracy.

Saturation. The Canon G5X produced fairly accurate saturation levels overall, with only moderate oversaturation in reds and blues, and mild boosts to most other colors. Bright yellow and aqua were actually undersaturated by relatively small amounts. Mean saturation at base ISO is 110.6%, or 10.6% oversaturated, which is about average these days. Overall, the Canon G5X's images appear to have pleasing saturation levels and you can always adjust saturation using the camera's "My Colors" options. Most consumer digital cameras produce color that's more highly saturated (more intense) than found in the original subjects. This is simply because most people like their color a bit brighter than life.

Skin tones. With Auto white balance in simulated daylight, the Canon G5X rendered lighter Caucasian skin tones just a touch yellow and flat. Manual white balance produced more pleasant, pinkish skin tones. Where oversaturation is most problematic is on Caucasian skin tones, as it's very easy for these "memory colors" to be seen as too bright, too pink, too yellow, etc.

Hue. The Canon PowerShot G5X produced a few color shifts relative to the correct mathematical translation of colors in its subjects, most visibly pushing cyan toward blue (probably for better-looking skies), red toward orange, and yellow toward green. Mean "delta-C" color error after correcting for saturation at base ISO was 4.66 which is better than average, though the shift and reduced saturation in yellows was noticeable in some of our test shots. Hue is "what color" the color is.

Exposure and White Balance

Indoors, incandescent lighting
Strong color casts with Auto and Incandescent settings, but very good with Manual white balance setting. Average exposure accuracy.

Color balance indoors under incandescent lighting was pretty awful with Auto white balance setting, with a strong red/magenta cast, and the Incandescent white balance option was much too warm, with a strong yellow/orange cast. The Manual white balance setting was pretty accurate, though, but a touch cool. The PowerShot G5X's exposure system handled this lighting well, requiring a typical amount of exposure compensation (+ 0.3 EV) for this scene. Our test lighting for this shot is a mixture of 60 and 100 watt household incandescent bulbs, a pretty yellow light source, but a very common one in typical home settings here in the U.S.

Outdoors, daylight
Slightly cool colors, with high default contrast. Above average exposure compensation required.

The Canon PowerShot G5X performed fairly well in the simulated outdoor lighting of our "Sunlit" Portrait shot. Although above average exposure compensation of +1.0 EV was needed to keep the mannequin's facial skin tones bright, the number of blown highlights in her shirt and the flowers is actually not bad for such a compact camera, and detail in the shadows is pretty good. The G5X underexposed our outdoor far-field shot at default exposure a bit producing some very deep shadows, but as a result very few highlights were blown. Luminance noise is a bit high in deep shadows, however chrominance noise is well controlled. Color outdoors was good with the Auto white balance setting, just a touch cool, though the camera rendered skin tones a little too flat and yellow, so we preferred Manual white balance here for our "Sunlit" Portrait shot.

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Resolution
About 2,500 lines of strong detail from in-camera JPEGs, a little higher from converted RAW files.

Our laboratory resolution chart revealed sharp, distinct line patterns down to about 2,500 lines per picture height in the horizontal direction, and to about the same in the vertical direction in JPEGs straight out of the camera, though some aliasing could be seen a lower resolutions. Extinction of the pattern occurred just past 3,000 lines in the horizontal direction, and past 3,200 lines in the vertical direction. Adobe Camera Raw was able to extract perhaps 100 extra lines of resolution in both directions as well as extend total extinction to between 3,500 and 3,600 lines, though as usual, ACR generated more false colors. Use these numbers to compare with other cameras of similar resolution, or use them to see just what higher resolution can mean in terms of potential detail.

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Sharpness & Detail
Fairly sharp, detailed images overall, though with some visible sharpening artifacts on high-contrast subjects. Noise suppression limits detail in low contrast areas.

Sharpness. The Canon PowerShot G5X captures fairly sharp JPEG images at default settings, though some edge enhancement artifacts are visible on high-contrast subjects such as the noticeable halos around lines and text in the crop above left. Default sharpening isn't as overdone as some cameras, but enthusiasts might want to shoot with a lower sharpening setting and apply additional sharpening in post processing instead, or shoot RAW for complete control over sharpening. Edge enhancement creates the illusion of sharpness by enhancing colors and tones right at the edge of a rapid transition in color or tone.

Detail. The crop above right shows some significant smudging of low contrast detail due to noise suppression, as individual strands of hair are blurred together in midtones and shadows, but performance here is still better than average for a compact digicam. Noise-suppression systems in digital cameras tend to flatten-out detail in areas of subtle contrast. The effects can often be seen in shots of human hair, where the individual strands are lost and an almost "watercolor" look appears.

RAW vs In-Camera JPEGs
As noted above the Canon G5X produces fairly sharp, detailed in-camera JPEGs at base ISO. But with a good RAW converter, more detail can often be extracted with fewer sharpening artifacts. See below:

In the table above, we compare an in-camera JPEG taken at base ISO using default noise reduction and sharpening (on the left) to the matching RAW file converted with Adobe Camera Raw 9.1 via DNG Converter 9.3 using default noise reduction with some strong but tight unsharp masking applied in Photoshop (300%, radius of 0.3 pixels, and a threshold of 0).

Looking closely at the images, we can see ACR extracts additional detail that isn't present in the JPEG from the camera, particularly in the red-leaf swatch where the thread pattern is likely treated as noise by the JPEG engine. Fine detail in the mosaic crop is also slightly improved, but as is often the case, more noise can be seen in the bottle crop. You can of course apply stronger noise reduction (default ACR NR used here) to arrive at your ideal noise versus detail tradeoff. Color was improved as well, with ACR removing much of the slight yellow-to-green shift in the JPEG. And, as expected, sharpening haloes aren't nearly as strong as the default camera output. Still, in-camera default JPEG processing isn't bad, but as usual you can do noticeably better with a good RAW converter.

ISO & Noise Performance
Very good high ISO performance for a camera its size.

The PowerShot G5X performed well here for its size, though not as well as some direct competitors, however that's mostly due to default JPEG processing. ISO 125 and 200 are pretty clean and detailed but lack crispness, and ISO 400 already shows some significant softening due to strong noise reduction. ISO 800 is noisier and softer from more aggressive noise reduction, and ISO 1600 is softer still. Image quality drops off rapidly above ISO 1600, with increasing luma noise as well as stronger blurring from noise reduction, though chroma noise is fairly well-controlled.

High ISO performance is definitely better than compact cameras with smaller sensors, but the G5X's JPEG engine does not appear to make the most of its larger 1-inch type sensor, producing somewhat soft images already at moderate ISOs in the relatively low-light tungsten lighting used for the series above. Note that the G5X offers three levels of noise reduction (Low, Standard and High), and these shots were taken using the default Standard setting. The good news is that noise in the G5X's RAW files is very competitive with other 1-inch sensor models, so for better high ISO performance, we recommend shooting in RAW format.

Of course, the impact of noise and detail loss are highly dependent on the size the photos are printed at, and pixel-peeping on-screen has surprisingly little relationship to how the images look when printed: See the Print Quality section below for recommended maximum print sizes at each ISO.

Extremes: Sunlit and low light tests
Pretty good dynamic range for its class. Good low-light performance, capable of capturing bright images in near darkness at all ISOs.

Sunlight. The Canon PowerShot G5X did fairly well under the deliberately harsh lighting in the test above. To keep facial tones bright, +1.0 EV compensation was required, which led to some clipped highlights in the mannequin's shirt and flowers, but not as many as expected for its size. Some may prefer the +0.7 EV setting for its reduced highlight clipping, but we found the face a bit too dim. Detail is quite good in the shadows at +1.0 EV, though very deep shadows are a little grainy and posterized, though chroma noise is well controlled. Overall, very good results in harsh lighting for such a compact camera, but consider using fill flash in situations like the one shown above; and it's better to shoot in the shade when possible.

Because digital cameras are more like slide film than negative film (in that they tend to have a more limited tonal range), we test them in the harshest situations to see how they handle scenes with bright highlights and dark shadows, as well as what kind of sensitivity they have in low light. The shot above is designed to mimic the very harsh, contrasty effect of direct noonday sunlight, a very tough challenge for most digital cameras. (You can read details of this test here.)

Face Detection. The table above shows results with the default exposure using Aperture Priority AE with Face Detection disabled and then enabled, as well as Smart Auto. As you can see, the G5X's face detection in Aperture Priority and Smart Auto modes both increased exposure dramatically compared to the default exposure in Aperture Priority mode, going from very underexposed to bright images. Smart Auto mode selected an aperture of f/4 instead of f/5.6 we used in Aperture Priority and it boosted ISO to 250 as well.

Intelligent Contrast. As part of the G5X's Intelligent Contrast (i-Contrast) feature, the camera has "Dynamic Range Correction" to help tame highlights, and "Shadow Correct" to bring out more shadow detail.

Above are examples of our challenging "Sunlit" Portrait scene shot with the G5X's two available Dynamic Range Correction settings, plus Shadow Correct. Mouse over the links to the right to compare, and click on the links to get to the full-resolution images.

As you can see, highlights were toned-down with the DR 200% setting but results with DR Auto were practically identical to the Off setting, perhaps because relatively few highlights were blown to begin with. Shadow Correct also worked as expected, boosting shadows without impacting highlights too much, leading to the best overall exposure for this series.

Note that Dynamic Range Correction may boost ISO depending on your current setting, so more noise and/or stronger NR may be visible with it enabled. (In our samples above, DR 200% used ISO 250, while DR Auto and Shadow Correct left ISO at 125.)

Above, you can see the effect of the available i-Contrast settings on our Far-field shot. Here, DRC Auto and 200% both made a difference, but it was pretty subtle. Shadow Correct on the other hand made quite a difference, boosting midtones and shadows while maintaining highlights.

Dynamic Range Analysis (RAW mode)
While we once performed our own dynamic range measurements based on in-camera JPEGs as well as converted RAW images (when the camera was supported by Adobe Camera Raw), we've switched to using DxO Labs' results from their DxOMark website. As technology advanced, the dynamic range of modern high-end cameras in some cases exceeded the range of the Stouffer T4110 density scale that we used for our own measurements. DxO's approach based on RAW data before demosaicing is also more revealing, because it measures the fundamental dynamic range of the sensor, irrespective of whatever processing is applied to JPEGs, or to RAW data by off-the-shelf conversion software.

In the following, we use DxO's "Print" dynamic range results, which are scaled based on camera resolution. As the name suggests, this scaling corresponds to the situation in which you print at a given size, regardless of how many megapixels the camera might have. (In other words, if you've decided to make a 13x19 inch print, that's the size you're printing, whether the camera's resolution is 16 or 300 megapixels.) For the technically-minded, you can find a discussion of the reasoning behind this here on the DxOMark website. Also note that DxO Labs uses a signal-to-noise (SNR) threshold of 1 when defining the lower boundary of acceptable luminance noise in their dynamic range measurements, which corresponds to the "Low Quality" threshold of the Imatest software we used to use for this measurement.

DxOMark has not published test results for the Canon G5X's sensor as of this writing. Dynamic range should be very similar if not identical to the G7X, though, which you can view here.

Low Light. The Canon PowerShot G5X performed very well in our low-light tests thanks to its fast lens, capturing bright images at the lowest light level (1/16 foot-candle), even at the lowest sensitivity setting (ISO 125). As expected for a 1"-type sensor, luma noise is a little high at ISO 3200, but fairly fine-grained, while chroma noise is well controlled. The G5X's highest ISO of 12,800 is quite grainy with strong blurring, but that's no surprise.

Color balance is pretty good with Canon G5X's Auto white balance setting, just a touch cool, even at highest ISO and lowest light level. We didn't notice any significant issues with hot pixels, pattern noise or heat blooming.

The camera's AF system was able to focus unassisted to below the 1/16 foot-candle light level in our tests, which is excellent, and the G5X was able to focus in complete darkness with the aid of its AF assist lamp.

How bright is this? The one foot-candle light level that this test begins at roughly corresponds to the brightness of typical city street-lighting at night. Cameras performing well at that level should be able to snap good-looking photos of street-lit scenes.

NOTE: This low light test is conducted with a stationary subject, and the camera mounted on a sturdy tripod. Most digital cameras will fail miserably when faced with a moving subject in dim lighting. (For example, a child's ballet recital or a holiday pageant in a gymnasium.) For such applications, you may have better luck with a digital SLR camera, but even there, you'll likely need to set the focus manually. For information and reviews on digital SLRs, refer to our SLR review index page.

Print Quality
High-quality prints up to 24 x 36 inches at ISO 125-200; Nice 8 x 10 inch prints at ISO 3200; and usable 4 x 6 inch prints at ISO 6400.

ISO 125/200 prints look very nice all the way up to 24 x 36 inches. Both ISOs produce virtually identical images, with lots of detail and vibrant colors. At 24 x 36 inches, we're pushing the resolving power of the camera's 20-megapixel 1-inch sensor, but at normal viewing distances for prints of this size, the detail level is quite good. Size down to a 20 x 30 inch print for even crisper detail.

ISO 400 images begin to show the faintest hint of softness compared the earlier ISOs, though noise overall is of very little concern. Fine detail is still very good, however, and we're able to print up to a large 20 x 30 inches. At this size, we see lots of detail, even in our tricky red-leaf fabric area.

ISO 800 prints top-out at 13 x 19 inches, as we begin to see stronger softening effects due to noise and noise reduction. At this print size, however, detail is still good and noise is not offensive. We'd even be okay with a 16 x 20 inch print for less critical applications.

ISO 1600 images display slightly stronger noise, as expected, though NR processing does well to subdue graininess -- but at the expense of some fine detail. Up to 11 x 14 inch prints, details look great and colors remain pleasing and saturated.

ISO 3200 prints take a dip down to 8 x 10 inches, as noise becomes noticeably stronger and makes larger-sized prints unacceptable to our eyes. Aside from our tricky red-leaf fabric swatch, which has become rather devoid of detail, prints at this size look clean and crisp.

ISO 6400 images top-out at 4 x 6 inches, as noise is quite strong now and in our opinion, detail becomes too soft to call larger prints acceptable. Colors also appear less vibrant and pleasing with a subtle greenish tint.

ISO 12,800 prints should really be avoided if at all possible, as noise and detail loss is quite strong. A 4 x 6 may be usable for less critical applications, however.

The Canon G5X offers nice performance with prints, especially at lower ISOs. Base ISO and ISO 200 images resolve a lot of detail and display great colors, which allow for large prints up to 24 x 36 inches. Moving up the ISO scale, the noise increases, as expected, but it mostly stays under control thanks to decent noise reduction processing -- but at the expense of some fine detail. At ISO 1600, for example, the G5X still manages a nice 11 x 14 inch print. The camera also manages a rather crisp and clean 8 x 10 at ISO 3200, and manages an acceptable 4 x 6 at ISO 6400. The G5X's top ISO of 12,800 should be avoided for prints if possible, however.