For some casual snapshooters, size is really no object.  In terms of usage, these users might use a camera very similarly to how they’d use a simple ultracompact – snapping a photo or two at social events, or taking casual photos around the house or room.  In contrast to a simple ultracompact, a simple full-size camera doesn’t have portability as its main concern; you probably won’t be able to stuff it in your jeans pocket, and it might even require its own bag.  Instead, the larger formfactor of a simple full-size camera often allows for better overall image quality.

Simple Full-size, premium: Pentax K-x with 18-55mm lens

If size doesn’t matter and your budget reaches up to $500 or so, your best bet is a basic DSLR camera that provides superb image quality and quick response times that simply blow away anything you can find on a small-sensor compact or bridge camera, especially in low-light situations. While more advanced photographers appreciate them for their interchangeable lenses and manual controls, all of them still have fully automatic modes for simple point-and-shoot use.

The Pentax K-x is Pentax’s entry-level DSLR, but you wouldn’t know it based on its featureset and image quality.  While priced in the same sub-$500 range as Canon’s Rebel XS and Nikon’s D3000, the Pentax K-x’s plethora of features rival many midrange DSLRs, with fast-firing 5fps continuous shooting, sensor-based image stabilization that works with any lens, expansive 11-point autofocus system, and even 720p HD video. Image quality on the K-x, especially in low-light situations, is a bit better than the Rebel XS, and both easily outclass the Nikon D3000.

• 12MP resolution
• 27-83mm (3x) zoom range
• f/3.5-5.6 aperture
• 1280×720, 24fps video
• Sensor-based Image stabilization
• 516g (18.2oz) – not including lens
• 122.0 x 91 x 69.0 mm (4.89 x 3.6 x 2.7 in) – not including lens
• 420 shots battery life (CIPA)
• $490 on Amazon

Simple Compact, midrange: Canon SD3500 IS

For a midrange budget, there really aren’t any value-added propositions for moving up a size class for this user group; no cameras exist that offer significantly better image quality for the price, so one may as well opt for the Canon SD3500 IS for increased portability.  See the recommendation for Simple Ultracompact, midrange for the description.

Simple Compact, budget: Canon SD1300 IS

For the budget price range, there really aren’t any value-added propositions for moving up a size class for this user group; no cameras exist that offer significantly better image quality for the price, so one may as well opt for the Canon SD1300 IS for increased portability.  See the recommendation for Simple Ultracompact, budget for the description.

Workhorse Full-size, premium: Canon Rebel T2i with 18-135mm lens

The Canon Rebel T2i is a midrange DSLR, well spec’d with a plethora of features and the best image quality in its sub-$1000 range. The T2i has one of the more capable autofocus systems around and boasts the best high-ISO performance for low-light situations. It also has the most comprehensive video capability around, with 1080p recording and even an input for attaching an external microphone.  While the basic kit, priced at about $800, comes with an 18-55 IS lens, spending about $200 more will net you the much more versatile 18-135 IS, equivalent to about 29-216mm and giving you just enough zoom (wide-angle and telephoto reach) to handle the majority of shooting situations, all without ever having to stop and swap different lenses.  If you’re willing to take the size, convenience and speed tradeoff of using multiple lenses, however, a lens combo of the 18-55 IS kit lens and 55-250 IS telephoto lens will run about the same price, and offer slightly better image quality and a much more extensive range (roughly 29-400mm, or nearly twice the telephoto reach).

• 18MP resolution
• 18-55 lens: 29-88mm (3x) zoom range; 55-250 lens: 88-400mm (4.5x) zoom
• f/3.5-5.6 aperture
• 1920×1080, 30/24fps (1080p) video
• Lens-based Image stabilization
• 475g (16.8oz) – not including lens
• 130  x 97 x 76 mm  (5.1 x 3.8 x 3.0 in) - not including lens
• 470 shots battery life (CIPA)
• $995 on Amazon; $1019 on Amazon for 18-55 + 55-250 kit ($799 + $210)

Workhouse Full-size, midrange: Panasonic FZ40

The market for the big, hulking ultrazooms of yesteryear have somewhat evaporated in the budget and midrange categories – for the majority of consumers, the advantages of having a portable formfactor like the Sony HX5 or Panasonic TZ/ZS/ZR series cameras is so enormous that no amount of expanded features or capability would sway them towards a larger camera.  Nonetheless, there are certain advantages to larger cameras like the FZ40: even bigger “megazoom” lenses, better ergonomics (there’s a real handgrip, and generally much more camera to hold onto), an electronic viewfinder in addition to the rear LCD for composing images, hotshoe for attaching external flash units, and manual controls that often aren’t found on compact ultrazooms for marketing reasons.

All prices are based on the lowest of amazon.com or bhphotovideo.com

Have you got a use case/need that isn’t covered here?  Feel free to post it in the comments, and I’ll keep it in mind for future guides (or maybe update this guide, if there’s a glaring omission in a category).  And if you think differently about any of the cameras, feel free to share that too!

General advice:

To give you all an idea of the perspective these recommendations are written from, here are a few guidelines I mostly go by:

Features trump image quality: With modern cameras, many image quality differences are mostly a consideration of the past.  Almost every camera released today has megapixel resolution far in excess of what’s needed (or even usable) for the majority of applications (like making a 4×6″ print, uploading to Facebook, or even displaying full-size on the biggest computer monitor or LCD screen you can buy), and in most daylight scenarios there is practically zero difference between cameras, especially among the top tier of manufacturers.  The main differentiator in your photographic experience and capability is what features you’ll have to work with – being able to take a wide shot with a 28mm wide-angle lens, or having a fast 5fps continuous shooting mode for action shots, for instance, is going to go a long way towards getting you the photographs you want, compared to minute differences in image quality or resolution.

Price/performance: The recommendations for different categories will mostly recommend the camera with the best value proposition – a lot of these are often written in the format of: Best budget camera under $200, best midrange camera under $300, best premium camera under $500, etc. While oftentimes, yes it’s true that Camera Xa has a slightly bigger LCD screen than Camera Xb and is therefore better, and the $50 premium still puts it under the $300 budget, as a knowledgeable consumer you wouldn’t want to spend that much more on a mostly cosmetic difference, and as an informed friend you would do best by recommending Camera Xb to your friend.

Simple Ultracompact

For many people, cameras are just cameras, and all they need is something that, for lack of a less-hackneyed phrase, they can “point and shoot”.  They’re not interested in photography and don’t need nor want full manual controls, and can make do without a huge zoom range.  They’ll take snaps while they’re out at social events or just randomly at home or in their room, but that’s about it.  For this group there’s thesimple ultracompact - a basic camera that has a few useful features (wide-angle lenses for photos in restricted interior space – group photos at a restaurant, for example - and image stabilization for low-light situations) but otherwise just provides good overall quality and a small formfactor that can be taken just about anywhere.

Simple Ultracompact, midrange: Canon SD3500 IS

For years, Canon’s iconic SD line has been the quintessential ultracompact point and shoot, and their popularity has good reason: they deliver solid image quality, decent featureset, no-frills point-and-shoot control, and aren’t overly expensive.  The SD3500 is one of the better featured packages available, providing a 5x lens with extremely versatile 24mm wide-angle (perfect for taking photos indoors and getting everything in the frame), 720p HD video resolution, and the increasingly common image stabilized lens.

• 14MP resolution
• 24-120mm (5x) zoom range
• f/2.8-5.9 aperture
• 1280×720, 30fps video (720p)
• Lens-based Image stabilization
• 160g (5.6oz)
• 99 x 56 x 22 mm (3.9 x 2.2 x 0.9 in)
• 220 shots battery life (CIPA)
• $249 on Amazon

Simple Ultracompact, budget: Canon SD1300 IS

The Canon SD1300 IS is a simplified version of the SD3500 – image quality is not quite as sharp; its 28mm wide-angle lens is still useful but not quite as versatile as a 24mm; and it produces only 640×480 video instead of 1280×720 HD video. It also uses standard physical buttons in its control scheme, instead of the pure touchscreen interface of the SD3500 – a minus in the fancy-tricks-you-show-off-at-parties category, but probably a plus for everyday usability.  Nonetheless, it fulfills the common use cases of the simple budget ultracompact, and does it with consistent image quality for a surprisingly low price (even among budget cameras).

• 12MP resolution
• 28-112mm (4x) zoom range
• f/2.8-5.9 aperture
• 640×480, 30fps video
• Lens-based Image stabilization
• 117g (4.1oz)
• 91 x 56 x 20 mm (3.6 x 2.2 x 0.8 in)
• 240 shots battery life (CIPA)
• $129 on Amazon

Workhorse Compact

While simple ultracompacts make great cameras for casual snapshots, they don’t quite meet the needs of avid picture takers.  A casual user might go to a party and take three or four photos with her friends the whole night, and might not care about quality so long as they’re passable for Facebook.  The avid user is the family photographer for the annual camping trip to Yosemite – they may not exactly aspire to be the next Ansel Adams, but will take in the neighborhood of hundreds of pictures to document and remember the whole trip.  The workhorse compact is the ideal camera for these users – good, versatile cameras with the capability to handle a large number of common situations, from daylight to low-light, and up-close photos in cramped interiors to outdoor graduation ceremonies from half a soccer field away, while still retaining fairly simple functionality and a portable formfactor.

Workhorse Compact, midrange: Sony HX5

While the Panasonic ZS/TZ cameras are the best-known in this category, the slightly more upscale Sony HX5 offers improved image quality (especially in low-light situations) and a number of useful features enabled by its high-speed back-illuminated CMOS sensor.  Featuring a 10x lens with a very versatile 25mm wide-angle, the HX5 has the zoom range to cover practically any situation.

The HX5 also excels in low-light situations.  In addition to its lens-based image stabilization, the high-ISO ability of the HX5′s back-illuminated CMOS sensor outperforms all the other CCD-based cameras in this category, and has even further low-light capability when used in a multi-sampling mode to reduce noise (Sony calls this “Handheld Twilight”).

The HX5 also packs a couple of unique features for travelers: the camera has an onboard GPS which adds coordinate information to the metadata of all images (as well as software to sync this data with Google Maps), and an automated “panorama mode” which simply works by literally waving the camera across the scene in front of you (although experienced panorama photographers should note that it only produces ~7MP images, instead of the full-resolution from stitching images manually).

It’s a feature-laden camera with supreme versatility and especially impressive low-light performance, making it a nearly perfect workhorse camera for the most common and most difficult photographs.

• 10MP resolution
• 25-250mm (10x) zoom range
• f/3.5-5.5 aperture
• 1920×1080, 30fps video (1080p)
• Image stabilization
• 170g (6.0oz)
• 104 x 61 x 31 mm (4.1 x 2.4 x 1.2 in)
• 310 shots battery life (CIPA)
• $299 on Amazon

Workhorse Compact, midrange: Panasonic ZR3

The smaller sibling of the popular TZ/ZS compact ultrazooms, Panasonic’s ZR series achieves even further feats of compactness by offering a versatile 25-200mm (8x) zoom lens into an ultracompact-size body.  Despite squeezing itself into such a tiny package (it’s exactly an inch thick), the ZR3 features all the essential capabilities of a TS/ZS series camera – expansive zoom range and wide-angle lens, and Panasonic’s image stabilization system (arguably the best IS system for blur reduction), 720p HD video, – making it a near-perfect travel companion.

If you’re really interested in the long end of the zoom range or need further exposure controls, and can live with an average-size compact rather than an ultracompact, the Panasonic ZS5 ($215 on B&H) bumps up the zoom range to a 25-300mm lens (12x) that also features a larger telephoto aperture (more light at the long end of the zoom, and less problems in lower-light situations), and provides users with full exposure program controls (including a full manual exposure mode).

• 14MP resolution
• 25-200mm (10x) zoom range
• f/3.3-5.9 aperture
• 1280×720, 30fps video (720p)
• Image stabilization
• 137g (4.8oz)
• 99 x 56 x 25 mm (3.9 x 2.2 x 1.0 in)
• 330 shots battery life (CIPA)
• $179 on B&H PHoto

Up next: Consumer categories (simple and workhorse again), for those without size restrictions (i.e. entry-level DSLRs and bridge-type superzooms)

I had a quick idea I wanted to jot down, and I haven’t found anything on it. I feel like someone out there must have thought up something similar already, or it’s already in the works at some black lab of a sensor company or something.

The idea I have is an image sensor that measures light intensity based on time-to-saturate – the time it takes for a particular photowell (representing a pixel) to saturate to its maximum capacity. The concept I’ve come up with has some interesting theoretical advantages in dynamic range over conventional photon-counting designs used today.

Imaging today – photon counting

First, a layman’s overview of how the conventional photon-counting design works in today’s sensors:

The sensor is a light sensitive device, and whenever photons come into contact with it, they are absorbed and a proportional number of photoelectrons are “knocked out” by the photon energy and collected in a photowell. From this photowell, a voltage measurement is taken, and this ultimately translates to a brightness value in the resulting image. In essence: Image brightness ∝ voltage reading ∝ electrons collected ∝ photons collected.

When taking an image, there is a set exposure duration, often referred to as a “shutter speed” in photography terms. This defines the time when a sensor is exposed to and detecting light – the exposure starts, light hits the sensors, exposure stops, and then we count the photons.

A limiting factor in this design is the photowell capacity. The number of electrons that can be stored in a well is finite, and once the photowell capacity is saturated, any additional electrons are not collected and hence the photons they correlate to are not counted. On the flipside, there is also a noise floor, where enough electrons must be gathered to produce a signal that is discernible from the random signal variation due to various forms of dark (thermal), electronics (read), and shot (photon) noise.

These two attributes lead to a problem of dynamic range – in scenes where light intensity differs greatly between the darkest and brightest areas, the sensor is simply unable to measure the full range of brightnesses and must cap measurements above and/or below a certain threshold.  This leads to the “blown highlights” and “crushed shadows” attribute often found in photos of large dynamic range scenes.

Time-to-saturate

The idea behind a time-to-saturate sensor is fairly simple. What we aim to measure in an image is light intensity – the flux of photons per time per area. The area is cancelled out of the equation by the photosite corresponding to a pixel being a certain area, so the measure we are really after is photons per time, for each pixel.

With photon counting, we fix a shutter speed (time duration), and then count the number of photons (via voltage measurement of photoelectrons) captured in that span, and use both to derive the intensity:

Intensity = photons / time = photons recorded / shutter speed

In time-to-saturate, the photon count is fixed at the capacity of the photowell, and the variable we measure is the time it takes for an individual well to saturate fully to the capacity.

Intensity = photons / time = max photon capacity / time-to-reach max-photon-capacity

How would the system work exactly? With a time-to-saturate sensor, we use as long a shutter speed as needed to fully saturate all photowells (in a conventional sensor, this is the minimum shutter speed to generate an all-white (max brightness) image). At the moment a photowell reaches capacity, it records a timestamp which will indicate how long it took to reach capacity. Once the exposure is finished, we are then left with a two-dimensional array of saturation times, rather than photon counts. Rather than recording 100k photons at one photosite, and 50k photons at a neighboring photosite where light was half as intense, the readings we get from this sensor would be along the lines of 1 millisecond time-to-saturate for the first photosite, and 2 millisecond time-to-saturate for the second, half-intensity photosite.

Key Advantages

There are two key advantages in our ability to take light intensity readings, both ultimately advancing dynamic range:

• There is virtually no limitation to the range of highlights we can capture, unlike the limitation imposed by the photowell capacity with photon-counting sensors. In our example, if there was a third photosite which had double the intensity of the first 100k photosite, and was exposed to 200k photons, it would only end up recording 100k photons since this is the capacity of the photosite, and thus both pixels would record the same white (max brightness) value, even though the 200k photosite pixel clearly represents a brighter area in the scene than the 100k photosite. A time-to-saturate measurement, by contrast, would simply produce a shorter time measurement: the 200k photosite saturates in 0.5 milliseconds, which we can compare to the 1 millisecond measurement for the first photosite and clearly conclude that the 200k photosite is twice as bright.
• Noise levels are reduced to the level of a maximally-saturated photowell. In a photon-counting sensor, any photosite that does not record a max white value by definition recorded a fewer number of photons, and thus produces a sub-optimal signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Photon or “shot” noise has a standard deviation of the square root of the signal – thus for 100k photons we have √(100,000) = 316.2 photons of standard deviation, and a SNR of N/√(N) = √(N) = 316.2. For 50k photons, however, we have an SNR of √(50,000) = 223.6. In contrast, all photosites in a time-to-saturate sensor reach the max well capacity, and will thus all have the max SNR. This ensures that all photosites record values well above the noise floor, and additionally reduces photon noise for all pixels to the level of a maximally saturated photosite (the 100k photon, 316.2 SNR in this example).

In theory, such a sensor would have an infinite dynamic range – the brightest intensities are simply recorded as short time-to-saturate durations, and enough samples are recorded from the darkest areas to place the measurement well above the noise floor.  This would have huge implications for large dynamic range photography and imaging in general, to be able to record the entire dynamic range of a scene in a single exposure, without having to resort to processing tricks like selective shadow/highlight adjustment or high dynamic range (HDR) blending.

Potential Feasibility Issues

I’m not aware of any sources that have thought of this idea before, but if there are then there must be some large feasibility (or perhaps cost) issues that have prevented its development thus far. The few issues that I can imagine, none of which seem like dealbreakers and none of which would place performance any worse than that of photon-counting methods, in theory:

• Timing accuracy/precision of photowell saturation. While photon-counting relies on accurate and precise voltage readings from the photowells, a time-to-saturate sensor would need good accuracy and precision in recording time when a photowell reaches saturation. How precise does the time need to be, to equal the theoretical precision of today’s cameras? Taking the contemporary example of a 100k photon capacity photowell, hooked up to a sensor/imaging pipeline with a 14-bit analog-to-digital converter (found on most high-end cameras today), we would need to quantize measurable photon counts into 2^14 = 16,384 steps. 100,000 / 16,384 = ~6 photons, which is the precision we need to be able to measure time-to-saturation by. Most high-end cameras today operate with a minimum shutter speed of 1/8000 second (125 microseconds) – a 100k photowell that fully saturates in this time (this is the maximum light intensity the photon-counting sensor is able to record, under any settings) is thus 100,000 photons/125 microseconds = 800,000,000 (0.8 billion) photons / second.  Finally, we use this intensity along with our 6 photon steps to arrive at 6 photons / (0.8 billion photons/second) = 7.6 nanoseconds. This is the precision with which a time-to-saturate sensor needs to record time by. Of course, depending on the application the numbers can vary – with fewer bits per pixel, we would need less precision (an 8-bit jpeg in this example would need just ~0.5 microseconds of precision), with lower photowell capacity we would need greater precision, and with a larger minimum exposure time we would need less precision.
• To take advantage of the greater dynamic range capabilities of a time-to-saturate sensor, the exposure duration must be longer than a conventional photon-counting sensor, to capture more light. For static scenes, this is unlikely to be an issue, but for dynamic scenes (e.g. moving subjects), the exposure duration can only be stretched so far before issues such as motion blur or camera shake blur are introduced. At worst, however, the exposure can simply stop after a defined maximum exposure time – at this point any photowells which have not reached capacity simply output a voltage reading like in a conventional sensor – this reading is then used to extrapolate a time-to-saturate which can then be compared with the other photosites. In the worst case, the maximum exposure time is the same as the exposure time in a conventional photon-counting sensor, and would produce an noise level and at least the same dynamic range, if not a greater dynamic range captured in the highlights. For any exposure duration exceeding that of the conventional sensor however, noise levels will be reduced and a greater dynamic range in the shadow regions will be achieved as well.

What do you think?  Any potential pitfalls or feasibility issues I might have missed? I’m especially interested if anyone has come across a source with similar ideas before. Feel free to post links in the comments!

tl;dr: Fujifilm’s EXR sensor is extraordinary, mostly for its dynamic range. If you’re after the best non-DSLR image quality around, your choices start at the Fuji F200EXR, F70EXR, S200EXR, and end there.

Fujifilm has long been a leader in revolutionary sensor technology, particularly at the smaller scale sensor market where the majority of manufacturers have long been content pumping out traditional, vanilla CCD sensors with square grid-based Bayer Filter Arrays.

In September of 2008, announced plans for their latest sensor: the Super CCD EXR, which combines the unique color filter array (CFA) and pixel binning features of various previous sensors into a single “switchable” sensor that can be optimized in one of several areas (which are typically mutually exclusive when designing a sensor): high resolution, high dynamic range, and low noise.

High resolution

High resolution mode is the default mode, which utilizes the full set of photosites on the sensor and produces an image with a corresponding pixel on each photosite – nothing too special here, though Fuji claims the diagonal layout of photosites (as opposed to simple square grid) helps to improve resolution.

High sensitivity

A comparison of a typical Bayer CFA (left) and the CFA on Fujifilm's new EXR sensor (right)

The second mode of operation for the EXR sensor is a high-sensitivity mode which Fuji calls “Pixel Fusion Technology”, which is fancy marketspeak for pixel-binning (combining reading from adjacent pixels together to produce a better signal). With the EXR’s pair-based CFA layout, Fujifilm claims that interpolation (and thus color resolution) will be more accurate because the binned pixels are closer together (e.g. the pair blue pixels are pretty much in the same location, while they’re separated by two pixel lengths in a standard square-grid Bayer array. I don’t know that I buy this argument particularly well – it’s true that same-color pixel values will be more accurate since they’re closer, but you can’t get something for nothing: for example, the average distance from red-to-blue is going to be increased, which lowers accuracy for interpolating blue values at red pixels.

Regardless of whether their CFA and photosite layout nets them better interpolation, the key element here is the combination of pixel readings to generate a stronger signal, thus decreasing the proportion of noise. Using microlenses to patch up the fill factor (area of the sensor which is actually responsive to light) and various optimizations to lower read noise will get the high sensitivity mode EXR sensor closer to the noise level of a natively lower resolution sensor.

Wide Dynamic Range

A diagram detailing the two exposures captured by the EXR sensor when operating in large dynamic range mode

The third mode of operation for the EXR sensor uses variable photosite sensitivity to greatly extend dynamic range.  The concept is taken from some of Fuji’s older generation SuperCCD SR sensors – at a given pixel location there are in fact two photosites, one operating at a lower sensitivity and one operating at a higher sensitivity. This essentially produces two images for any particular shot, one at low sensitivity that is underexposed (capturing highlight detail, such as a bright sky), and one at high sensitivity that is overexposed (capturing shadow detail, such as a shaded building face). These images are combined, much like HDR combination is done, to create a single image which captures a much larger dynamic range than a single exposure could.

Edit: dpreview seems to report that the EXR sensor actually achieves this by operating one image at a shorter exposure time (shutter speed) than the other, rather than actually varying the sensitivity. If so this would be even better, as you’d have lower noise due to operating both sets of photosites at the same lower sensitivity.

As with pixel binning for greater sensitivity, the pixel count in the resulting image will have to halve as well.

There are some notable improvements compared to Fuji’s older SR sensors. For starters, the low and high sensitivity photosites are now of equal size, which Fuji claims will allow for a greater dynamic range extension (the SR sensors consisted of mostly “regular” photosites with tiny “low sensitivity” photosites sandwiched in). Furthermore, based on most of the image samples that can be found, the recombination method used for EXR is a bit closer to HDR blending, which doesn’t map values linearly on the same tone curve – this produces a punchier photo with better contrast that still looks natural upon viewing (due to the way human vision judges brightness in relative terms rather than absolute), even if its not quite pixel-accurate. This seems to address one of the complaints about Fuji’s older SR sensors, which provided a large dynamic range but ended up squashing it linearly to the same 12-bit RAWs or 8-bit JPEG images that all other cameras provide – the results were images that did have more highlight detail but looked “flat” and lacked contrast (because that 0.5-1 stop of highlight detail at the top is squashed into a small 250-255 pixel value range).

The EXR sensor has a big advantage over conventional HDR as well (i.e. taking multiple exposures and blending them): it captures an extended range image in a single instance, making it usable for moving subjects (HDR sports photos, yay!).

The Results

The first EXR sensor, the Fujifilm F200EXR, debuted in February 2009, and was followed up not long afterwards by the S200EXR bridge camera and the ultracompact ultrazoom F70EXR, giving us a chance to see some hard results.

Imaging-resource, as always, has perhaps the most comprehensive test bed of images, and samples from their express review of the F200EXR can be found here: http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/F200EXR/F200EXRA7.HTM

Their site isn’t the most comparison-friendly however (though you can give their comparator a shot) so I’ll link to dcresource’s reviews of the F200EXR and F70EXR as well and reference these.

The first thing to note is that Fujifilm hasn’t lost a step in the noise race – in both the standard high resolution (no binning) and high sensitivity (binning, lower resolution) modes, the EXR sensor simply wipes the floor with every camera on the market this side of a full-fledged DSLR.  In the F200EXR review there is a side-by-side comparison (search for the text “Again, things look great through ISO 400″ – it’s right above this) between the 6MP high-sensitivity mode image, and a 12MP high-resolution mode image that is downsized to 6MP – essentially doing the same as pixel binning but off-camera, and digitally, rather than in-camera and analog.  The result is a slightly crisper image but noticeably more noise, though the effect isn’t dramatic.

What’s interesting is that the side-by-side comparison in the F70EXR review shows that the high-resolution mode, downsized to the same resolution as the high-sensitivity mode, actually produces better results – the same amount of noise but much crisper detail. This seems to punch a hole in the effectiveness of the EXR’s in-camera pixel-binning: if the digital data (full of rounding errors, and compressed to 8-bit jpeg) can be averaged and produce more effective results than binning the analog data (the raw readings from the sensor), then we can surmise that having more accurate data on the location of brightness values (i.e. more pixels) helps us produce more accurate images overall than having slightly more accuracy on the actual brightness values.

Further down on the F200EXR review (search “so the two would be the same (6MP) resolution” – right below this), you’ll see a direct comparison using the camera’s wide dynamic range mode. As opposed to the high sensitivity mode, here we can see real, significant benefits – highlight detail that is hopelessly blown out in the left image is very much visible in the wide dynamic range image. For those of you too lazy to navigate the admittedly long and cumbersome dcresource review pages, here’s a marketing image from Fujifilm that gives you the general idea:

Standard dynamic range (left) and wide dynamic range (right) - probably exaggerated a bit

This image gives you a general idea of the difference, though I wouldn’t take it at face value. The image on the right is probably a fair representation of what you’ll get using the wide DR mode (and you can compare this with shaded interior/sunlit exterior/sky photos you’ve probably taken), but the image on the left has way more contrast (and less DR) than any typical camera would, on its default settings at least.

The Triumph of EXR – Dynamic Range

So is Fuji’s EXR sensor a success? It depends on what you’re after. Many diehard Fujifilm Super CCD fans fell in love with the low-resolution F10/11 and F30/31 ultracompacts, both of which came in at just 6MP and absolutely wiped the floor with the competition in terms of noise performance.  And while subsequent SuperCCD iterations have maintained a clear advantage over competitors in this area (and this newest EXR sensor does to it better than its predecessor), the fact is that the high 12MP or so resolutions found on today’s sensors still compromise noise performance, despite any fancy “Pixel Fusion Technology” that Fujifilm tries to market.

The true triumph of the EXR sensor is in its dynamic range capability, and its separate pixel design (it essentially operates two sensors) works not only better than any of its competitors, but far better than even a natively lower resolution sensor.  While a larger photosite does afford more highlight headroom, halving the pixels (doubling the area) affords at most 1 stop. The EXR’s method, which essentially captures two independent exposures, is in theory capable of capturing dynamic range that is infinitely far apart, though for most scenes they’ll likely need to overlap to avoid gaps in coverage, which based on the settings allowed on current cameras is 3 stops.

According to dpreview’s dynamic range test of the F200EXR, the EXR can deliver nearly 11 EV (stops) of dynamic range.  Not only does that far outclass any compact (or even the bulky SLR-like bridges that use the same small sensors) on the market, but exceeds the dynamic range of DSLRs like the Canon 7D, Nikon D300, et. al, which all range around 8 EV for their jpegs. With a bit of tweaking with RAW files in Adobe Camera Raw, the DSLRs just about manage 10EV.

It’s simply remarkable that jpegs from a camera with a pint-sized sensor can beat out RAW images from the highest-end DSLRs, but that’s what innovative technology can do for you over hammering away with sheer physical size and trying small refinements from there (which is how most of the rest of the sensor industry has been operating for years). I can’t begin to fathom how much the Super CCD would change the landscape of photography if Fujifilm ever scaled up the sensor to DSLR size.

Canon's 7D, which is essentially a 60D with fancy marketing and a higher price tag

It’s interesting to see how much an effect marketing has on the general photography consumer. Over the past few months, Canon has released a couple of moderate upgrades, one of which has been hailed as revolutionary and game-changing, and the other which was met with a big collective yawn and cries that Canon has fallen behind the cutting edge and is playing catch-up with Nikon. The biggest difference? One camera was given an incremental version number, and the other was given a new model number as the start of a different series.

Take the actual specs of the two cameras, listed as features in relation to their predecessor model:

Camera A:

• 18MP sensor vs. 15MP sensor
• ISO100-12800 vs. ISO100-12800 (unchanged)
• 19pt AF, one f/2.8 cross-type vs. 9pt AF, one f/2.8 cross-type
• 8fps continuous vs. 6.3fps
• 100% frame, 1x magnification viewfinder vs. 95% frame, 0.95x magnification viewfinder
• Wireless flash control onboard vs. wireless flash control with additional accessory
• 1080p (30/25/24fps) video vs. no video

Camera B:

• 16MP sensor vs. 10MP sensor
• ISO50-102,400 vs. ISO50-6400
• 45pt AF, 39 f/2.8 cross-type vs. 45pt AF, 19 f/2.8 cross-type
• 10fps continuous vs. 10fps (unchanged)
• 1080p (30/25/24fps) video vs. no video

The Canon 7D

Camera A, of course, is the new Canon 7D, which is essentially a 60D successor to the 50D, and Canon’s new crop body for sports/action. While it has modest spec improvements over the 60D, there’s very little here that is game-changing – the sensor remains the same size, gets a paltry 20% increase in resolution that is likely to mean nothing with most lenses (the 50D’s 15MP sensor’s Nyquist Frequency (maximum theoretical resolution) already exceeded the resolving power of most Canon lenses – see dpreview’s test on a consumer Canon 18-200 and Canon’s high-end 70-200 2.8).

Improvements have been promised in the ISO department (and if you look at the preliminary sample shots from imaging-resource, there’s a considerable improvement on the 7D over the terrible 50D, which finally brings it to or slightly above D300s levels), but the range stays exactly the same.

AF points have been increased from 9 to 19, which will improve tracking, but the number of fast and accurate f/2.8 cross-type sensors remains exactly the same, at just one (the center point).

The jump to 8fps is a bigger jump than in years past (where the 20D already had 5fps back in 2004), but this like resolution runs into diminishing returns – the jump from 6.3 to 8 helps but doesn’t transform it into a useful sports camera, unlike say the jump from a Rebel’s slow 3.4 to 6.3 (it’s 26% vs. 85%).

Viewfinders are viewfinders – a nice improvement but having a Canon 20D and switching back and forth from its 95%, 0.9x mag viewfinder and my 5D all the time, not one that is going to make or break the shooting experience.

The two game-changers that the 7D provides are the now-standard video functionality, and wireless flash control (a built-in ST-E2 essentially, powered by the camera’s pop-up flash). Video capability opens up an entirely new realm outside the domain of still photography, and wireless flash capability allows for much more creativity in off-camera lighting straight out of the box, without requiring photographers to buy and carry along a bulky extra master flash or ST-E2 transmitter.

So at the end of the day we have a moderate step up from Canon’s previous 50D, that does sports photography somewhat better than any crop body before it, but still lags far behind not only Canon’s “pro” body (1D now has bigger 1.3x sensor, ISO100k, 45 AF points with 39 cross-types, and similar 10fps), but even the similarly-priced D300s from Nikon (lower ISO6400, but the same 51 AF point system as the D3, and 8fps with battery grip), as well as the now bargain-bin D300 (ignoring lack of video capability).

Despite its greater action capability, it’s still not the all-around do-everything solution that a camera like Nikon’s D700 is – despite having very adequate action capabilities (unlike Canon’s 5D Mark II), it still lacks the full frame sensor, which puts it at depth of field, dynamic range, and ISO noise disadvantages against its larger-sensored relatives.

So at the end of the day, you have a crop camera that gives you moderate sports capability, though it’s still nowhere near as powerful as the professional line, and doesn’t deliver the image quality or lens compatibility of full-frame cameras. Which sounds an awful lot like an xxD series camera, except Canon’s chosen a new single-digit model designation (“7D”) which has Canonite fanboys everywhere at their altar ready to and pony up an additional $500 (+42%) price hike over what a “60D” model would have cost.

Canon 1D Mark IV

The Mark IV is probably a very worthwhile upgrade for Mark III owners, given that camera's shortcomings, but is woefully inadequate when placed alongside Nikon's D3s

Canon’s 1D Mark IV is Canon’s two-and-a-half-years-in-the-making update to their much-maligned Canon 1D Mark III camera. As documented by Rob Galbraith, among others, the 1D3 had developed a reputation for fickle continuous AF tracking, to the point of being unusable by the standards of some.

So among the things promised by the new Mark IV is a completely revamped AF system, now with more than twice as many f/2.8 cross-type sensors (39 vs. 19 previously).

The Mark IV also supports a native ISO up to ISO12800 with a boost up to ISO102400 (we’re now up to 10 stops over ISO100), which gives it a range of 4 stops greater than the Mark III (which went up to ISO3200 native, ISO6400 boost).  For those who shoot in low-light constantly, this is a pretty big game-changer in-and-of-itself, regardless of the actually ISO quality (almost anything will be better than shooting at a native ISO3200 and having to digitally push those images).

The only other changes of note is the same 1080p (30/25/24fps) video mode, and a significant bump in resolution from 10MP to 16MP (60% increase), though the sensor stays the same at a roughly 1.3x crop.

The 1D Mark IV isn’t a monumental leap by any means – if all goes well it will be what the Mark III probably should have been – workable AF without glitches and a large high ISO range for low-light shooting.

However in my opinion, Canon bungled greatly here by again opting for an 1.3x APS-H sensor.  When Nikon’s D3 came out, it exposed one of the biggest knocks against the 1D series, which was its limited flexibility due to the crop factor altering angles of view for full-frame lenses and its larger mirror preventing compatibility with smaller crop lenses.  While it’s a fact that pure sports shooters may not care much for, it prevents the 1D from serving as a general purpose camera for the other big “professional body” market: journalists.  While the D3 can pull double-duty shooting with a 70-200mm or 300mm telephoto one event, and switch over to a all-purpose 24-70mm standard zoom the next, all general purpose lens options for the 1D are extremely awkward. Consider:

• The typical 24-70mm standard zoom provides an angle of view equivalent to 31-91mm. Nowhere near wide enough
• The next widest zoom, Canon’s 17-40mm f/4, provides an extremely short 22-52mm. Not nearly enough versatility.
• And if you want f/2.8, Canon’s 16-35mm f/2.8 gives an even smaller 21-46mm range.

For this exact reason, of course, Canon hopes to upsell you to their $8k 1Ds series, and ideally make you pay more than double ($13k total) for what Nikon neatly fits into a single D3s body for $5k.

Canon diehards will claim, of course, that with the 1D and 1Ds bodies, Canon simply offers the best of both worlds – maximizing range with the 1D and maximizing resolution with the 1Ds. But Nikon has already shown this argument to be utter crap with its D3x and D3(s) tandem. Birders aside, the “crop factor” argument of extending focal length range holds little weight – yes the out-of-camera image appears to be “closer”, but photographers often forget a crop sensor is exactly that – a crop of the full-frame image. The exact same result could be achieved by taking photos with a larger sensor of same pixel density, and manually cropping the images down later. The upshot of crop sensors is that greater pixel density can be achieved while retaining fast shooting speeds (you’re processing less pixels than a larger sensor would), but the vasts majority of users (sports photogs and journalists shooting for newsprint and online) aren’t coming close to utilizing the full resolution capability of their cameras. The downshot of crop sensors are the increased depth of field, higher noise, lower dynamic range, and less margin for framing error, which are all very real effects that show up in everything from poster prints to low-res newsprint and online photos.

The only metric by which the Mark III can hope to compete is with high ISO quality, but with both more pixels and a smaller sensor than not only the Mark III but Nikon’s competing D3s (Mark IV ends up with 3.1MP per cm² vs the D3s’ 1.4MP/cm²), the chances of reaching parity with, much less greatly exceeding, competitors seems slim.

The Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 VC - currently one of only two f/2.8 midrange zoom lenses on the market, and the only one under a grand ($650 to be exact)

When it comes to midrange lenses, there’s a few different approaches. Of course, a lot of people start at the low end with an 18-55mm kit or so, but eventually most people graduate and there are pretty much two ways to go:

1. A small range, high-quality, high-aperture zoom.
2. A large range ultrazoom with (usually) lower quality and smaller aperture

One of the advantages where ultrazooms seemed to gain the leg-up on large aperture zooms was in the image stabilization department, where nearly every single ultrazoom lens does, but up until recently only one large aperture crop lens (Canon’s $1000+ 17-55mm f/2.8 IS) did.

That left just one (very expensive) option for Canon users, and Nikon users completely out in the cold (they pay $1300 for a 17-55 f/2.8 without VR). Third party manufacturers, have as always had cheaper alternatives, such as Sigma’s 18-50mm f/2.8 and Tokina’s 16-50mm f/2.8, but all of these lacked any sort of stabilization as well.

Now finally, Tamron has gone ahead and introduced their VC stabilization to their flagship crop standard zoom, the 17-50mm f/2.8 (or rather, Tamron SP AF 17-50mm f/2.8 XR Di II VC LD Aspherical [IF]), which finally delivers a large aperture, image-stabilized standard zoom for an affordable price ($650 currently).

It’s only knock is that it doesn’t yet have the fast USM or SWM-based autofocus of the Canon or Nikon models, although it’s a feature I’ve long-regarded as over-rated for standard zooms for most people’s actions.

Aside from the numerous advantages associated purely with live view (and could technically be realized with a traditional DSLR – it’s just that forcing live view only is likely to spur much more rapid development), the one key advantage to Micro Four Thirds (and upcoming systems like it, such as Samsung’s NX system) is that the removal of the mirror assembly allows lenses to sit much closer to the image plane, making for much smaller camera bodies and lenses.

The first few of these cameras – the Panasonic G and GH1 – failed completely to live up to the small form factor potential – they were shaped much like traditional SLRs, albeit slightly smaller.

The Panasonic GH1 - one of the first Micro Four Thirds cameras which didn't quite realize the potential of the formfactor

Next, Olympus released a Micro Four Thirds of its own: the E-P1 “Pen” which harked back to Olympus’ historical line of compact film cameras. Unlike the G1, the E-P1 actually began to approach what some would call “compact” – it was just 1.4in thick, though that’s not taking into account the attached lens.

Now Panasonic is jumping in on the bandwagon with their E-P1-esque GF1, which sports a slim compact-like body. The specs are nothing to get excited about, though it does have the a built-in flash that was notably missing from the E-P1. In a puzzling decision though, Panasonic decided not to implement any sensor-based image stabilization, relying on lens-based IS to counter camera shake. Unless they were denied a sensor IS license by Olympus (a possibility), I’d say this is a rather bone-headed decision, since any stabilized lenses will add weight unnecessarily (or in the case of pancake lenses that are pretty much made for this kind of camera, impossible to add in), defeating the entire purpose of Micro Four-Thirds.

The two kit lenses offered with the GF1 are a bit more appealing than the E-P1 package: a standard 14-45mm OIS kit lens and a 20mm f/1.7 pancake prime. The prime still isn’t quite there to portrait range and gets even further away from all-around wide angle utility than Oly’s 17mm f/2.8 pancake, but it does offer a much larger f/1.7 aperture.

A comparison of the new landscape in premium compacts:

Panasonic GF1 size comparison

As expected, the added IS to the Panasonic kit lens makes it much larger (22.6% longer) than the E-P1 setup. Panasonic’s pancake, however, is about the same size as Oly’s 17mm and with its f/1.7 aperture is by far the best in terms of large aperture performance (35mm equivalent of f/3.4)

If you’re in the market for this kind of camera though, the most sensible thing seems to be taking the E-P1 to get yourself sensor-based IS, and combining that with Panny’s 17mm pancake prime. Though you will be losing out on the built-in flash, which is somewhat of a must-have for a camera like this (since again, needing to carry around a huge external flash defeats the size advantage).

Pentax K-x (space white)

Following up on their K-7, Pentax has now come up with an entry-level K-x. While it doesn’t bring anything groundbreaking that wasn’t already seen on the K-7, it packs in many of the features seen on many competitors’ midrange model, and perhaps pending reviews on image quality and disregarding the overall Pentax system upgrade options, is probably the best choice out there currently for the beginning photographer/student.

The big headline features:

• 12.4MP CMOS (different from the K-7 14.6MP sensor, but interestingly also uses CMOS unlike all previous Pentaxes which used CCDs)
• ISO up to 12.8k
• Live-view with face-detect AF
• 720p, 24fps video
• 4.7fps continuous shooting
• $650 MSRP with 18-55 kit lens (and likely to drop further once it gets off pre-order)

A comparison:

Pentax K-x comparison

In a comparison with the $500 entry-level cameras, the K-x blows them away in nearly aspect, and goes toe-to-toe or even exceeds the D5000 and Rebel T1i in every single category, despite being significantly cheaper (especially once the street price drops lower from MSRP)

Interestingly enough, the Pentax K-x will come in a variety of colors, including an ultra-spiffy red (below), the space white shown above, and your ordinary black.

Interestingly enough, Pentax Japan features a site where you can come up with your own custom color scheme, and apparently order it as well, which personally is an insanely appealing prospect.

Pentax K-x (red)

Pentax K-x custom design - design your own!

I think this is a ranking of custom designs that users have created

Pentax K-x press release

Nikon SLR Refresh

Nikon introduced a couple of new SLR updates, the updated D300s and D3s. The D300 is a pretty incremental upgrade to the mid-level D300, offering a modest +1fps improvement in continuous shooting (up to 7fps), and bringing the video capability that’s now standard on every new DSLR.

The bigger story came a few months later, in the form of the D3s. While still not a revolutionary introduction, it is much more than a software refresh. Among the features of note were a video mode (at 24fps!, albeit only at 1280×720 (720p) resolution), 11fps available in a higher-res crop mode (it now crops only 1.2x instead of 1.5x), and an increase in ISO range, up to ISO12.8k natively with a boost to ISO100k. The D3s presumably packs a different sensor, though it still maintains the same 12.1MP resolution.

People have been going goo-gah over the last spec in particular, especially given such a high linear number for ISO (and from here, it’s just four more stops til we get to ISO1.6 MILLION), though it’s really just +1 stop natively and +2 stop boost over the previous D3. And it’s important to note that the simple availability of an ISO capability says nothing about image quality at that level – that would be the same mistake as having the maximum shutter speed expanded from 30 seconds to a minute, and somehow thinking this magically makes photos at 1/500s less blurry. Given that the resolution (and thus pixel pitch) remained the exact same, I certainly wouldn’t expect quality to be any worse than the D3, and quite probably will be a tad better (although I have extreme doubts about the ISO100k mode, which is digitally boosted 3 stops; things have always looked terrible at just +2 stops digitally, even boosting ISO100+2 to 400.)

All in all, about as much as you could expect from Nikon, who seems to do very incremental updates and waits a long time to deliver big, revolutionary refreshes. Here’s hoping we see that D3s sensor in a D700s soon, though 1080p at 24fps would be nice (and completely feasible: 1920x1080x24fps = 49.8MP/s throughput, while we definitely know that the D700 supports 12.1MPx9fps = 108.9MP/s throughput in its continuous shooting mode).

Nikon D3s press release (I don’t know why they keep referring to it as “D3S”, past history and even the logo in the image clearly denote “D3s”)

The Nikon DS3, now with 720p video and ISO up to 12.8K/100K(boost)

Nikon also announced a couple of lens refreshes, with Version II’s of their popular 18-200mm VR ultrazoom and a long-awaited update to the 70-200 f/2.8 VR to optimize it for full-frame (FX) sensors. As Nikon had long trumpeted 1.5x crop DX sensors before their introduction of the full-frame D3 in 2007, they cut corners with their introduction of the 70-200 f/2.8 VR in 2003, building a lens that was technically full-frame but had an abysmal drop-off in performance once you actually got to the corners outside of a 1.5x imaging circle. This wasn’t found out until a bit after the D3 was released, finally giving digital photographers a platform to test the lens’ full frame performance, which resulted in tests like these:

http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/nikon_70-200_2p8_vr_n15/page6.asp

http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/widget/Fullscreen.ashx?reviews=17&fullscreen=true&av=3&fl=105&vis=VisualiserSharpnessMTF&stack=horizontal&lock=&config=/lensreviews/widget/LensReviewConfiguration.xml%3F4

The new 70-200 II promises to fix all of these problems with a new optical design and coatings, and promises to throw in a more effective “4-stop” VR system as well. There haven’t been too many authoritative tests yet to show how it performs (if you’ve found any, send me a link!), but presumably they should have no problem building such a lens – Canon has had two 70-200 2.8′s that’ve performed flawlessly on full-frame, and Nikon itself had a great 80-200 2.8 lens prior to the 70-200 VR I.

The one stickler? As if Nikon’s $2019 price on the original 70-200 I wasn’t enough, the 70-200 VR II will now set you back a cool $2400.

Nikon 18-200 II and 70-200 2.8 VR II press release

Have got a big night tonight – will update later, but for now you can munch on the details of the press release and Imaging Resource’s short overview/analysis.