Friday, August 8, 2008

Thinking about cameras - Panasonic LX3, Nikon P6000, Olympus/Panasonic micro 4/3 standard

It seems that this autumn will be hot for serious compact cameras, the so-called RAWsumers. First was the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 announcement, then Olympus and Panasonic annouced the micro 4/3 format, and then Nikon announced the Coolpix P6000 camera. Now we are waiting how Canon responds...

About Panasonic LX3: This camera seems to be promising. However, I'm having second thoughs about the zoom range. Perhaps Canon G9/G10 with the zoom range 35-210 mm would fit me best. However, G9 is quite big, and the sensor is a bit noisy.

About the micro 4/3 (mFT) standard: It is definetely interesting that sensor technology ("flat" NMOS sensors) mostly removed the telecentricity requirement, at least it seems to be so. In a way this shows that Olympus et al. made a misjudgement, but on the other hand this open up possibilities for the micro 4/3 standard.

Perhaps we shouldn't expect too much from the first generation mFT cameras, though? However, having an interchangeable lens camera in the Canon G9 size category (or even smaller) is definetely attractive.

About Nikon P6000: A lot of megapixels in a small sensor. I wonder how Nikon can cope with the sensor noise. Perhaps they can. However, there are two additional drawbacks: short battery life (260 shots) and Windows Vista based RAW format. What was Nikon thinking?

No comments: