GE G1 Digital Camera Review

GE G1

Digital Camera Review

Mar 11, 2007 - By Richard Baguley
1.7 The digital camera market today is a place of razor-thin profit margins and competition more reminiscent of a street brawl than the gentlemanly rivalry we used to see. As such, we don’t see newcomers very often since most companies look at the entrenched hold that the big companies have on the camera market and decide to move into new markets where they are less likely to get a bloody nose. But newcomers do try their luck sometimes, and General Electric is giving it a go.   Actually, General Electric is only sort of giving it a go; the electrical and broadcasting conglomerate is licensing their brand to a new venture called General Imaging. The new company announced a range of 8 cameras at PMA. You can find out more details on their web site or by watching our video tour of the whole range here. Their launches are broken down into four product lines: the budget A series, the intermediate E series, the compact G series and the high-end X series.  We decided to take a closer look at the G1, the first of their new compact range. The G1 has a 7-megapixel image sensor and a 3x optical zoom lens. Pricing and availability has not yet been finalized so keep an eye on our news pages for details. We looked at a preproduction model of this new camera at the PMA show in Las Vegas.
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Connectivity
   
   
   
   
   
Software
General Imaging didn’t specify what the software package that would be supplied with the G1 was, but they did say that it would include basic imaging editing capabilities.
 
Jacks, plugs, ports
The single port on the base of the G1 does triple-duty as a USB, A/V and power port, which means that you have to use the special cable which is supplied to connect the camera to a PC or a TV for downloading or viewing images. This also means that if you lose or forget the cable, you can’t use a generic one.
 
Direct Print Options
Both DPOF (for flagging images for later printing) and Pictbridge (for connecting  directly to a printer) are supported, providing a reasonable selection of ways to quickly print out an image without a PC.
 
Battery
The lithium ion rechargeable battery in the G1 is rather small, holding only 750 mAh of charge. This is a concern; General Imaging claims a battery life of 200 images, but we would be surprised if the camera achieved this in real life.
 
Memory
26MB of internal memory is included, and this can be expanded through the use of SD and SDHC cards that can support up to a capacity of 4GB.  
 
Other Features
Panoramas – A separate panorama mode is present on the mode dial, and this can automatically match and stitch images within the camera. However, this was not working on the preproduction model that we looked at, so we can’t comment on how good or bad it is.  
 
Image Parameters Page 8 of 11 Overall Impressions
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