Serious Compacts contributor Wouter Brandsma has posted his extended use impressions of the Ricoh GR Digital III over at his personal blog.  Be sure to have a read to get his insights about this exciting camera and see some great photographs!

Link: Wouter photoblog - 'My final Ricoh GR Digital III impressions'

Today dpreview posted their review of the Canon Powershot G10. "At base ISO and in high contrast conditions, this is the highest resolving compact we have ever tested." But is this still enough to remain one of the best compact cameras on the market, or has the competition (read Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3) beaten Canon? Find out here.

And related to the Canon G10, and other recently released compact cameras like the Panasonic LX3 and the Leica D-Lux4, Adobe updated Camera Raw. The new Camera Raw 5.2 plug-in is available for Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Elements 6 and later. When you still work with CS3 or before you can download the DNG Converter 5.2. The new Camera Raw supports the next compact camera models: Canon Powershot G10, Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX150, Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28, Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 and the Leica D-LUX 4. Also the Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 is supported in Camera Raw 5.2. Camera Raw 5.2 can be downloaded here and the DNG Converter 5.2 here.

There is still a caveat with the RAW support for Panasonic cameras. From the Adobe website:

With the release of Camera Raw 5.2 (and upcoming Lightroom 2.2 release) there is an important exception in our DNG file handling for the Panasonic DMC LX3, Panasonic DMC FX150, Panasonic DMC FZ28, Panasonic DMC-G1 and Leica D-LUX 4. For those choosing to convert these native, proprietary files to the DNG file format, a linear DNG format is the only conversion option available at this time. A linear DNG file has gone through a demosaic process that converts a single mosaic layer of red, green and blue channel information into three distinct layers, one for each channel. The resulting linear DNG file is approximately three times the size of a mosaic DNG file or the original proprietary file format.

This exception is a temporary solution to ensure that Panasonic and Leica's intended image rendering from their proprietary raw file format is applied to an image when converted DNG files are viewed in third party software titles. The same image rendering process is applied automatically in Camera Raw 5.2 and in Lightroon 2.2 when viewing the original proprietary raw file format.

In a future release Adobe plans to update the DNG specification to include an option to embed metadata-based representations of the lens compensations in the DNG file, allowing a mosaic DNG conversion. In the interim Adobe recommends only converting these files to DNG to allow compatibility with third party raw converters, previous versions of the Camera Raw plug-in or previous versions of Lightroom.

Ken Rockwell just published his G10 review, and it's worth reading with a caveat: Ken shoots JPEG only, so his findings regarding image quality are of limited applicability to those of us who shoot RAW.

Link: Ken Rockwell - Canon G10

[Thanks Wm Wragg]

Edward Taylor has written an excellent "first impressions article" on the Canon G10 for The Online Photographer. Like his review of the Sigma DP1 for T.O.P., the G10 review is written from a practical standpoint. He begins:

For serious photographers, whenever we turn our attention toward small cameras, we want to know if we are able to do serious work with them. We all know that even a plastic toy camera can produce stunning art, but that is not what we mean. We want a camera that is responsive, flexible and has sufficient image quality—so that small size is an advantage, not a compromise.