INBOX:SINCE THE compact digital camera came out, amateur enthusiasts have been on the hunt for the perfect portable snapper – one that can bridge the gap with the full-blown, lens-packing professional digital SLR cameras.

When Canon brought out the G9 high-end compact camera, many thought they had found the holy grail. Now it has brought out the G10.

So is this The One we have been looking for?

Very slightly larger and heavier than the G8, the G10 now offers a 5x optical zoom with a 6.1-30.5mm f/2.8-f/4.5 lens – equivalent to 28-140mm on a 35mm camera.

That doesn’t make a lot of sense at first.

The older G9s had a 6x zoom lens equivalent to a 35-210mm on a 35mm.

However, as any photography student will tell you, a decent wide-angle lens tends to be more useful than a long zoom.

An additional macro mode lets you shoot just one centimetre away from an object. Your pictures are viewable via a 3in LCD screen on the back.

The G9 offered 12.1 megapixels; the G10 has a massive 14.7 megapixels.

That means even larger file sizes and clarity, so you will need a large hard drive on your computer for storage.

A veritable explosion of buttons and dials on the camera – exposure dial, hot shoe, ISO dial, power, shutter button and zoom lever – means there is plenty of room for manual adjustments without the need for searching through menus.

That should speed up your picture taking quite a bit.

The all-important ISO range is 80-1600 so you will be able to take pictures in very low light or on the brightest days.

The shutter speed range is 15-1/4000 sec and the G10 also shoots movies at 30 frames a second, which is TV quality, but the lack of HD (high definition) recording is an oversight these days.

There is a huge range of shooting modes to choose from, special effects galore, along with image stabilisation, face detection and red-eye correction.

Overall, the G10’s solid metal body is good to hold and fits in a large coat pocket.

Having said all that, this is still not the fully manual SLR you might remember and there is still not quite the same level of control. The addition of an optical viewfinder helps, though you will still see only 80 per cent of the picture you are taking.

The verdict, however, is that this is an excellent camera with lots of manual control and easy operation – and you can get it for much less than the listed price (€635) if you shop around, especially online.

So, what’s the difference between Canon’s new G10 compact digital and its forerunners?