Canon G1 X exhibits light leak / internal reflection

Our exhaustive camera testing often smokes out issues in cameras that others (and often the manufacturers) don't find. Though that's a good effect of exhaustive testing, it often leads to much time spent verifying an issue before publishing, and leaves us with the unenviable task of reporting a problem with a popular camera. But we'll get right to the chase: While shooting our standard ISO series in sunlight, we came across an anomaly that affected the center and far right of the image area at 50mm equivalent focal length. The phenomenon was clearly visible from ISO 3,200, increasing in brightness to ISO 12,800. (In fact, you can detect hints of it down to at least ISO 400 in the rollover at the bottom of our Canon G1 X Light Leak/Reflection analysis, when comparing against the ISO 100 images.)

We submitted our sample images to Canon and they confirmed the issue, calling it "Glow Dots," and saying that it will likely affect all PowerShot G1 X units. Canon further says, "Due to the limited circumstances under which the PowerShot G1X 'Glow Dots' phenomenon can occur, Canon does not plan to change the camera's specifications or offer repair service for this issue."

Indeed, we agree it's unlikely that this will affect most photographers' use of the
camera, but we've prepared a section with more detail and sample images to cover the issue in our G1 X Preview. Click here to read our Canon G1 X Light Leak/Reflection analysis.

Also, if you've found the same issue in your sample of the G1x, please let us know in the Canon PowerShot G1 X Light Leak Discussion forum thread, since we've at this point only been able to test a single sample of the G1x ourselves.