Digital Photography: The year gone by

Sudeep Naik, Dec 31, 2008 1612 hrs IST

Here's a recap of what happened in the digicam world in 2008 and what we could expect in the months to come.

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EXPERT REVIEW

The year 2008 has been a great year for digicam enthusiasts. So far, we've seen about 128 launches for cameras ranging from D-SLRs to entry-level consumer compacts. While Sony has led the brigade with about 11 new model launches, competitors like Canon, Nikon, Panasonic and Samsung are not far behind. I'm sure by the time this article is published, a few more would have released.

Personally, I've had the opportunity to take a look at most of these models and, honestly, most of them weren't so different after all; except for a few minor modifications.

Rather than writing about specific models that I liked or disliked, let's talk about what really happened in the digicam world and what we could expect in the months to come.

Recap 2008

More Pixels

We started the year with a many compact camera launches with most of them pointing to the fact that 8 MP CCDs would be the norm from now on. Almost all the cameras have similar CCD sizes (or MP) specifications, which we saw continue for about a couple more months.

Then came the big daddies; the 10 MP consumer cameras followed by the 12 MP cameras around September.

Although I really appreciate the way MP count has jumped in leaps and bounds, what everyone seems to have forgotten is, every time a high MP camera was launched the quality went down a few notches. Even today, many 8 MP cameras offer better quality than the 10 or 12 MP counterparts. In fact, not much has changed in terms of quality from the 6-7 MP days, except that today high MP and sensitivity (ISO) are more marketable than picture quality. In all cameras we've tested this year, most gave up on picture quality as soon as we tried to go beyond the ISO 400 mark; so much for sensitivity levels of up to ISO 3200 or 6400. Newer imaging processors too haven't given much of a quality boost.

One thing that I wish to see in the coming year is for compact camera manufacturers to do away with CCD and give CMOS a fair chance. Although, CMOS is a little complex to design, it doesn't require the external circuitry that most cameras have to use with today's CCDs. Also, CMOS sensors may be capable of providing marginally better pictures, especially at higher Megapixels.