In pursuit of a viral, five-year-old compact camera
The real PowerShot was the friends we made along the way.
I’ve been trying to buy a Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III for two weeks, and I no longer believe this camera exists.
It definitely existed at one point. The camera was released in 2019, and I’m sure I used one at least for a little bit because I was working at a camera website then. The G7 X III was the latest in a long line of very good “premium†compact cameras with high-end specs like a big sensor, manual controls, and a decent lens. I’ve recommended G-something-X cameras to people for over a decade, but it’s far from the only option if you want a really good compact. Last I checked, Sony was selling roughly twenty different RX100 models, plus a vlogging-friendly ZV-1 II. So I found the news that the G7 X III in particular was so popular among TikTokers that it is nigh impossible to find in stock a little hard to believe.
The Canon G7 X III is so popular that strategies for buying them have become a whole sub-genre of videos on TikTok
Aside from just generally being a good camera, the G7 X III represented Canon’s attempt to appeal to creators. The compact camera market was all but DOA at that point, so Canon and other manufacturers started adding YouTuber-friend …