Been fooling around more with my recently gotten Canon G10 and I’m really liking the dials and the layout of the controls and menus.

The dials for the ISO, Shooting modes and exposure compensation really make it easy to dial in many of the parameters you need while shooting on the run.

The shooting-mode dial, the usual PASM set-up with the addition of a Custom 1 and 2 setting make it easy to go from “P” (Program) mode to “Tv” (Shutter priority) to “Av” (Aperture priority) quickly and easily.

The ISO dial makes it a snap to jump between ISO Auto, Auto ISO High (Auto Noise?) and individual ISO settings from 80 through a barely usable 1600.

Jumping around through the usable-range of 80 thru 400 is a breeze and I wish my DSLR Nikons had this feature.

The exposure-compensation dial is a joy to behold and use (another feature I wish my DSLRs had) and makes quick work of under and over compensating the internal light meter.

All of the dials have a very nice indicator on the beautiful rear screen, making it easy to Dial-in your setting without having to look at the top of the camera.

The menus, while it took me a little bit to get used to after using DSLR Nikons for so long, is really intuitive and makes adjusting your white-balance, “My Colors” (color modes like vivid, neutral, sepia, B&W etc), bracketing, flash-compensation, Neutral-density filter, compression and picture size very easy to do and quick to access.

You can also convert the “quick-print” button to a different function, I use it for instant access to the Neutral-Density filter.

By the way, Ken Rockwell has done a review of the Canon G10 and, although I rarely agree with everything he says, his review is pretty spot-on about all the pluses and minuses of the new Canon G10.

He goes into great detail and, unfortunately, the compact-camera market still remains a place where you have to buy a camera that fits pretty specifically to what you intend to shoot, rather than being able to buy a camera that’ll shoot pretty much anything you can throw at it, like a DSLR can.

Check out Ken’s review here. he may be a pompous ass, but I sure can’t deny he knows what he’s saying in this article.

Beyond that, I really like my G10 and it’s intuitive controls and will use it for those occasions when I don’t want to lug around a DSLR.

I will be checking out the Micro 4/3rds system when I get around to it though….