Megapixels is still a pretty strong marketing tool. One of the first questions anybody asks about a camera is "how many megapixels is it?" but today, that number does not really mean much. The next thing is zoom range. But technoligically, the action today is more on low light performance. Most point and shoots do pretty poorly when it starts getting darker. Fuji has been a leader in this field in point and shoot cameras with their own SuperCCD technology and Sony actually makes the sensors for many other brands as well so they have put a lot of research into it (yeah, I hate their memory stick thing too). The cameras they look at in the article are pretty interesting sounding. The Fuji camera the article mentions is supposed to be out later this month- it is still a small point and shoot size but has a 10mp sensor and a 10x zoom range (27- 270mm equivalent) in a compact size (all other 10x zooms are a lot larger) and is said to retail about $300. If you want an all-purpose camera with a wide range in both lighting situations and zoom that you can carry in your pocket, this could be an excellent camera. Fuji used to use the more expensive XD cards (my F31fd does- cost me about $45 for a GB card) but has switched to SD.
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0907/09...filmf70exr.asp
Their aproach to reducing noise:
Quote:
Pixel Fusion Technology: Technology of Fujifilm changing the colour filter arrangement. Two side-by-side, same-coloured pixels are taken together as a single pixel. The area of imaging elements is doubled, the sensitivity is twice the normal level, and "dark noise" is extremely small. Therefore, it is possible to create a high sensitivity image with little noise, instead of increasing the gain from a single pixel and increasing the noise
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