You’d never know I’ve been a fairly serious hobby photographer for the best part of the last 10 years, after the golden rule I broke this week.

Page one, chapter 1, in the book of “So you’ve decided to take up photography” is never, repeat NEVER take a new, untested bit of kit to a shoot you can’t afford to miss. And yet that’s exactly what I did when I attended my cousin’s wedding with my less than one day old Canon G10.

I knew from weeks of reading up on the much anticipated successor to the lineage of compacts, which upped the game among prosumer camera manufacturers, to expect mixed results. I have been somewhat spoiled for the past 7 or 8 years by my Canon 300D; the first sub-£1000 digital SLR on the market and still an amazing bit of kit.

But the 300D’s awkward size and low battery life, small screen and plastic body, not to mention it’s weight and insufferably long read / write compact flash lag time had put me off experimental creative photography long ago. Even a hacked firmware patch to include hidden features turned off by Canon in the factory, but enabled on it’s more expensive sister cameras, like the 350D and 10D, couldn’t breath new life into a camera I’ll always be grateful to, for teaching me the basics of manual photography, but never quite portable enough to “just snap” when I’m out and about.

Apart from missing some great shots at my cousin’s wedding, though lack of preparation, in the short time I’ve had to adjust to the compact camera form factor, I’ve already began to see why I found it so hard to find anyone critical of the G10, in my research prior to purchase—and as I slip between writing this and trying out new things as I go, I’m finding more reasons to be glad I own this very handy bit of kit all the time.