Filling in the Gaps: The Canon PowerShot G6

Filling in the Gaps: The Canon PowerShot G6. 

I like the Powershot G-series cameras. I have a few of the A-series cameras, which were the consumer versions compared to the higher specification 'G' cameras, but I always try and nab a G series PowerShot when they come around. I already have the brick-like PowerShot G5 (actually two, since I picked one up from the CEX website as a 'generic' digital camera) and the PowerShot G12, which was supposed to be glitchy but is presently my take anywhere camera.

So when I spotted a Canon Powershot G6 on the Kamerastore website I had to add it to my collection. Of course it was in the 'Not Passed' category, with 'flaws that will affect typical use'. In this case, the 'rear screen occasionally flickers and does not always work properly. The top screen has some bleed, but everything is still visible. Otherwise [it is] working normally.'

The Canon PowerShot G6 is a digital point-and-shoot camera released by Canon in 2004. The G6 has a 7.1MP CCD sensor and like most of the early G-series cameras saves images to CompactFlash cards. The normal minimum focus distance is 0.5m but it also has a 5cm super macro mode that I am keen to try. It has a sleeker appearance than the brick-like PowerShot G5 and it looks more like it's smaller A-series brethren like the Powershot A720. It's  still big and bulky like the G5, though. 

When the camera arrived, the first thing I had to do was charge the battery. Fortunately this one came with a charger and a few other cables, so it wasn't a case of needing my trusty universal charger. After charging the camera it powered up nicely and it was time for a sojourn across the road with my little collection of filters to my favourite tree and well for a quick test and to seè what it's infrared response was like.

The normal colour palette came out quite nice and natural, but nobody is interested in that. Juggling the menus to black and white mode was really easy, as all Canon cameras of the time, and even today, have retained a similar menu structure. I took monochrome images with the red, green, and blue filters and then colour and black and white infrared images to make aerodromes and to try some channel mixing. Trichromes and aerochromes were made using GuIMP photo editor.

The infrared response was not bad at all, on program mode the exposure was about 1s and the images came out quite nicely. Trichromes were a little muted, but nice and natural looking and the aerochromes were nice, but nothing special (imagine that, me saying that aerochromes from a camera were, 'meh'). But what I really liked was the results from the channel mixing. Well, one of them.

Channel mixing for me has always been a bit 'hit-and-miss', and the PowerShot G6 is no exception. What I've always done is to take an image with the camera set on 'normal' colour mode with an infrared filter and then use that as my starting point. Actually, I think my biggest mistake is not setting a custom white balance before I take the shot, so it's likely this that creates such variable results.

Once the file is in GuIMP I set an auto white balance and then open the channel mixing tab. There, in the red channel I set the red setting to 0 and the blue setting to 1, and in the blue channel I set the blue channel to 0 and the red channel to 1. 

Normally the channel mixed files come out with a distinct blue tinge, as in the first image of my favourite tree and well, which I've only included because of the edges where I clearly didn't hold the infrared filter properly over the lens, but the second image came out really lovely, almost like a digital aerochrome. 

I'm not sure exactly why this worked like this. With the first image, of the tree, the sun was behind me, directly on the subject. But with the second image, of the field, the sun was to the subjects left, shining more from the side. Perhaps this made the difference, but who knows? But I certainly liked it.

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