Need a good compact camera for travel

I have the G7X2, a great camera, but often prefer my G5X as it has the electronic view finder that is necessary to see things on sunny days.
A slightly bigger and more expensive choice is my EOS M with the 15-45 mm lens for all around photography, light for travel, perhaps also carrying the 22 mm f2 lens for a smaller package and low light situations.

Charles in Ohio.
 
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stevelee

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i need suggestion for light compact camera for travel landscape and street photgraphy and escpecially to be good in low light (the main reason i m buyin new camera)

my budget is around 600$
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i m thinkin to go with canon g7x mk ii but i confused as it is 3 years old and

so any better recommendations ?
I have the G7X II, which was my travel camera until late 2019. It takes great pictures. I have framed 13” x 19” pictures I made with it hanging on my walls. I took some of them to display at a neighborhood art show a couple weeks ago. I took it on my last trip in fall, 2019, as a backup. I replaced it with the G5X II, which I really didn’t need. It costs a little more and has some small advantages. I used the popup viewfinder occasionally when the sun was too bright for the screen to be of much help. The viewfinder is useful for framing and zooming, but not good for focusing. Autofocus is good enough that is not a problem anyway, and the little lens gives broad depth of field. The lens on the 5 is a little better, I think, but anyway zooms in slightly more to a 120mm equivalent. The 5 will shoot 4K video, but I have not used that enough to have an opinion.

I also briefly considered the M50, but decided that I wanted to stick with something that would fit in my pocket. Its advantage would be that I could put on a wider lens than the 24mm equivalent of the G cameras. In travel I never need anything longer than the 120mm, but scenic vistas and tight interiors can need stitching. The G7X III didn’t appeal to me. Its new features didn’t fit my needs and interests.

So from my experience, I can highly recommend the G7X II. It is a great choice for the money. If you want to spend more and don’t mind something larger, then there are some good alternatives.
 
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Maximilian

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Hi Groopp! And welcome to CR forum!

You want a light compact camera that should also be good in low light.

When it comes to size a PowerShot G7X could be a good solution, like you mentioned in first.
If you worry about the Mark II beeing somewhat old there is a slightly more expensive Mark III as well.

If "low light" is "the main reason" as you mentioned, then think about an APS-C sensor instead of an 1" size.

My travel setup is a 200D/SL2 with the two pancake primes EF40 STM and EF-S24 STM.
Today there is the newer 250D/SL3. Or you can go smaller with an EOS M body, like privatebydesign already said.
Both of course bigger but also with bigger sensor = more light gathering.

Good luck with your choice.
 
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stevelee

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Hi Groopp! And welcome to CR forum!

You want a light compact camera that should also be good in low light.

When it comes to size a PowerShot G7X could be a good solution, like you mentioned in first.
If you worry about the Mark II beeing somewhat old there is a slightly more expensive Mark III as well.

If "low light" is "the main reason" as you mentioned, then think about an APS-C sensor instead of an 1" size.

My travel setup is a 200D/SL2 with the two pancake primes EF40 STM and EF-S24 STM.
Today there is the newer 250D/SL3. Or you can go smaller with an EOS M body, like privatebydesign already said.
Both of course bigger but also with bigger sensor = more light gathering.

Good luck with your choice.
There is a good argument for the G cameras in terms of low light. The zoom lenses are f/1.8-f/2.8 over the range. Traveling with APS-C, lenses that fast become even less convenient. So there is a trade off. Larger sensor sizes let you get away with higher ISOs. Faster lenses let you use lower ones. I find the noise level acceptable up to ISO 1600 on the G5X II. Stabilization lets you use slower shutter speeds, depending on focal length. With that camera I made handheld shots from the balcony of my stateroom on a moving ship as we left Venice as it got dark. The pictures were amazing. There was some noise in the night sky that was easy to tone down, since there was no detail to lose. I printed on my usual 13” x 19” paper a shot of the Doge’s Palace, the top of St. Mark’s, and environs from the canal we were traversing. It looks great.

For me the choice of what camera equipment to take is based on the purpose of the trip. If I take a bunch of gear, the trip becomes a photo shoot, no matter what I intended. If my purpose is to go places and do things and just incidentally take pictures, then I just throw my G cameras in the bag that fits under the seat on the plane. I still took over 3,000 pictures during the fall, 2019, trip that started with a bit over two weeks in Italty followed by a 14-night Mediterranean cruise. But picture taking didn’t distract from my activities, most of the time. (OK, sunset on Santorini became a photo event.) And the camera fit in my jacket or pants pocket. The only time I missed having more gear was in the Pantheon when I took pictures of the dome to stitch together back home. I don’t know that 16mm on my full frame or 10mm on my Rebel would have taken it all in, but at least it would have been fewer shots. For me, that wouldn’t have been worth carrying a bag full of stuff.

So I would say that in addition to technical considerations, one needs to consider personal style, habits, purposes, etc. In the nineties, I quit taking a camera with me at all when I traveled. In 2000 I had become less serious about photography (or less obsessed), so I thought it was OK to take a basic camera along. That has worked out well for me since. And my “basic” camera has become rather sophisticated.
 
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There is an effective 2 stop equivalence factor between a 1" sensor and an APS-C sensor. So an f1.8 lens on a 1" sensor gives the dof of an f3.5 lens on an APS-C sensor, and iso 1600 on a 1" will be very similar to iso 6400 on an APS-C camera.

Size and portability are important factors but if the main reason for an upgrade is improvements in high iso shooting then nothing beats sensor size, and I don't see anything beating the M series cameras in that size.
 
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JPAZ

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As I carry my body + lens kit in a shoulder bag or backpack, my wife takes her Sony Rx100iii out of her purse and shoots away. It has a 1" sensor and is portable. A few negatives: Not an SLR, Menus need some "dives" to navigate so not as quick to change settings on the fly (but there is a control ring around the lens), Lens is 24-70 (equivalent) so no tele and maybe not wide enough for some, this model is 2014 technology and (this is CANON rumors) it is not a Canon. But, it is in your price range on Amazon. Newer versions of this have updated the sensor further but the prices climb. Maybe worth a look?
 
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stevelee

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There is an effective 2 stop equivalence factor between a 1" sensor and an APS-C sensor. So an f1.8 lens on a 1" sensor gives the dof of an f3.5 lens on an APS-C sensor, and iso 1600 on a 1" will be very similar to iso 6400 on an APS-C camera.
Depth of field is not much of an issue with an 8.8mm lens. (And we really don’t need to redo the 30-page discussion on the meaning of “equivalent,” enlightening as that may be. OK, I will grant that the depth of field changes the ISO, except when it doesn’t, and same for the sensor size and focal length.) My point is that f/1.8 and ISO 1600 or lower worked fine in low-light situations as I traveled. My Rebel wasn’t great at ISO 6400, but I would hope the M cameras are better by now at that sensor size. I did consider getting an M50. I would still sort of like to have an M camera, except I haven’t figured out when I would use it. For travel, I want something that fits in my pocket, but still takes good pictures and gives me more flexibility than just using my phone, and otherwise I shoot full frame and have a choice of EF lenses. Tradeoffs are matters of personal priorities.

I haven’t used the G5X II since I got home in November, 2019. When I get back to going places, it will be right there with me.
 
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stevelee

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As I carry my body + lens kit in a shoulder bag or backpack, my wife takes her Sony Rx100iii out of her purse and shoots away. It has a 1" sensor and is portable. A few negatives: Not an SLR, Menus need some "dives" to navigate so not as quick to change settings on the fly (but there is a control ring around the lens), Lens is 24-70 (equivalent) so no tele and maybe not wide enough for some, this model is 2014 technology and (this is CANON rumors) it is not a Canon. But, it is in your price range on Amazon. Newer versions of this have updated the sensor further but the prices climb. Maybe worth a look?
I didn’t really consider the Sony cameras in that class. The newer models went in the wrong direction for me. They got longer zooms and slower lenses.
 
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Maximilian

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There is a good argument for the G cameras in terms of low light. The zoom lenses are f/1.8-f/2.8 over the range. Traveling with APS-C, lenses that fast become even less convenient. So there is a trade off.
You are right, when you think about f/2.8 EF zooms.
I mentioned the f/2.8 pancake primes. For more FL range (not neccessarily needed for the requirement of city and landscape) I add a 85/1.8.
All three lenses and body together in a small holster bag.
And from my experience with a G7X2 the IQ of the pancakes is better than the Powershot zoom, which is still good in IQ.
And the gain you get from more licht with that f/1.8 should be less than the much bigger sensor size of APS-C.

Of course a G Powershot is much smaller. So about size I would go there first, too. (as I mentioned in my post you quoted)
But Groopp mentioned that low light was more important than size.
So I brought up that alternative to think of.
Now it's up to Groopp to weigh and decide.
 
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stevelee

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The IQ of the 1-inch G cameras is heavily dependent upon software. If you shoot JPEGs, the camera's software will compensate. I always shoot RAW, so I use the lens corrections in Photoshop, occasionally with a bit of manual tweaking afterward. Somebody once realized that you didn't have to add another 3 pounds of corrective and compensating lenses if you let software do some of the work. (And I still use software lens corrections with a $2,000 lens on a full-frame camera.)

And of course the "1-inch" designation is really meaningful only if you are using a TV camera from the 1950s. The sensor is really about 1/2" x 1/3", cavernous compared to most cell phone sensors, but still tiny. So I am amazed at what I can get out of the tiny lens and small sensor. If I were shooting photos for a glossy travel magazine, my priorities would be different, of course. But I'm not.
 
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Sporgon

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Of course a G Powershot is much smaller.
The G1X III has an aps-c sensor, in fact the same one as the M5/M6/M50 etc. It is small and light enough to genuinely fit in a (light weight) jacket pocket.

When it comes to anything over base ISO I have found that aps blitzes the 1". In fact even base iso images from the 1" sensor cameras that I have had look like they have come from a small chip, whereas the aps doesn't look that much different to FF much of the time.
 
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