Canon slashes megapixels from next-gen PowerShot Canon has introduced its latest PowerShot camera: the G11, which replaces the existing G10. The first thing to note about the G11 is that Canon’s significantly reduced the number of megapixels between the two models. Whereas the G10 featured a 14.7Mp CCD sensor, the G11 is actually only a 10Mp camera. That's no bad thing. The …
This is excellent news. The G series has always been considered "professionals' companions", and this will endear them no end as their most obvious competition in Panasonic dither around with rumours rather than products. Hopefully it will mark the start of a real change, though I'm not too optimistic. Olympus recognise that even at DSLR sensor sizes there is no benefit in going above 12Mp, and are instead focusing (sic) on making the most of that resolution. 10Mp on a 1/1.7" sensor is still a little dense for my liking (23Mp/cm²), but probably unavoidable on a compact, and definitely a step in the right direction... which doesn't have a hope in hell of filtering down to any more consumer-oriented cameras, alas.
Finally, common sense has broken out.
Cameras had FAR too many pixels for their sensor size and had become noisy in anything but bright sunlight of flash.
Following the lead of the Panasonic LX3, Canon have topped out the pixels at 10 MP and got the pixel size up a bit.
dpreview.com has a lot to answer for as they publish resolution measurements on perfectly lit targets, but at least some common sense has prevailed here.
Educating the "rest of the world" that pixel size is more important than excessive pixel count will be a tall order - people (especially men) like simple numeric variables to judge by.
Maybe, you just specify the pixel area in square microns (bigger is better).
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