Canon G12 vs G7 in dark

Question

Back five years ago, I bought a Canon G7 with an underwater housing. Boy, it was the best technical compact camera I could find at the time, and I have loved it's complexity. One of it's downsides is the level of grain and enormous blur in dark areas, or it's general capability for dark photography.

Now there is the G12. Is it any better? How much better?

I would like to stick to the Canon G* family, but I recognize that a lot of competition has developed over the last few years. If I want to shoot high-qual photos in daylight but also dark areas (think night sky and stars, dance clubs, etc), have all the technical knobs and whistlebells that the G* family has, and very fast shutterspeeds in dark shoots, is there another compact camera out there that outperforms the Canon G* series? Ideally, I would like an underwater housing available as well.

Answer 1

No, better, but not much better. Advanced within the same sensor-size have a tough time challenging the laws of physics. You can however get nowadays a much larger sensor. The Canon Powershot G1 X for example is considerably better than models you mention, plus it does start with G, just the way you like it! An underwater housing is available too.

Other competitors exist from Fuji, Nikon, Pentax and Sony. For a complete list, just search for a fixed-lens camera with large-sensor. The database is always kept up to date on my site, so the list will include new models as get released. Note the sensor-size in the search results. The larger it is, the better low-light performance generally is.