Snapshots with Canon G10

After considerable research and rumination, I settled on the Canon G10 as my "pocket camera," something I could have with me at all times and get shots I might miss when the major equipment stayed home. The G10 has a pretty good all-around reputation in reviews and among users, including Paul Canfield, son of my friends Stella and Michael.
The 28-140mm (in 35mm equivalent terms) lens covers at least 80% of needs. It has a viewfinder. It has very convenient exposure compensation and ISO dials on top. And the raw files it produces can be processed in DxO Optics Pro, a specialized raw file converter I already own because it does a great job with my Nikon 12-24mm lens. DxO uses sophisticated optical analysis-derived profiles to correct lens distortion, chromatic abberation, and sharpness.
I carry the G10 in a Lowepro pouch that just fits it since it is a little large as a pocket camera. So far I have been satisfied with the Canon. I shoot in aperture-priority mode and auto-ISO and keep an eye on what's happening since at ISO 400 the camera starts to show how foolish Canon was to build it with a 14.7 megapixel sensor. COME ON! You can't cram that many photosites in a very small sensor and expect clean images. While this is a very good camera as it is, with a 9-10MP sensor, it could have been excellent. I know from experience that with these sensors, the size that matters is the size of individual photosites (so an adequate number of photons can strike them).
Well, on to some results. I'm house sitting in Port Townsend for several weeks, and here are some snapshots as I start my stay here. Since I don't do serious image processing on my laptop, these are converted in Picasa. Picasa is free and great for quick image processing, but it is hardly my choice for the best possible output.
UPDATE JULY 23, 2009: I added a peony photo processed in Adobe Camera Raw. In a future blog post I'll compare ACR, DXO Optics Pro, and the raw converter provided by Canon.

Dog shop in PT

Peony in the garden of the widow of painter Andrew Martin

PT is in bloom

So far, I'm finding it challenging to get shallow depth-of-field to see how the bokeh develops. Zoomed to 140mm, the maximum aperture is f4.5. On this tiny sensor that still produces significant DOF. Picasa is not ideal for evaluating the quality of the out-of-focus areas, but this example shows that it can be at least OK.