Either the Canon G10 or the Sigma DP-1 would suit me fine if I really wanted something lighter and smaller than my Canon 5D to lug around. I really don't comprehend what it is that is not satisfying. Do you really think specification competition will ever end - it never did for all of the years of film cameras during my lifetime, and that is a pretty long time.

Eliminating the Sigma from the equation, there is hardly, if any improvement in image quality from four year old cameras. All we're seeing is more megapixels. In fact, when I reviewed the five megapixel CoolPix 5000 for Shutterbug in 2002, I was making 12x18 prints that were regularly mistaken for medium format film by photographers seeing them hanging in my booth at art shows.

Since this is a wish list forum, I want to see manufacturers give us a way to turn off noise processing. There was nothing wrong with grain when we shot film and there should be nothing wrong with noise which looks more natural then the smearing that the manufacturers do to minimize noise.

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Either the Canon G10 or the Sigma DP-1 would suit me fine if I really wanted something lighter and smaller than my Canon 5D to lug around. I really don't comprehend what it is that is not satisfying. Do you really think specification competition will ever end - it never did for all of the years of film cameras during my lifetime, and that is a pretty long time.

Larry,

Your describing the situation on the assumption more image resolution does not contribute to more image quality. On that I have to disagree vehemently that given any print size chosen 8x10 or 11x14 a picture made from my old 8MPX dSLR compared to one made with my current 13MPX dSLR makes a dramatic difference in better quality you should definitely see unless you are legally blind. And, I sure wouldn't depend on the judgement of hooples at a local fair as any useful criteria, just walk into most of their living rooms and see how badly adjusted most people TV's are, even green skinned newscasters, and popular opinion's value goes down to the floor.

I don't know what all the options are on the menu of a Canon G10, but my Canon dSLR does support turning off virtually all chip post exposure processing, although some of the noise reduction is not part of the post exposure processing, so cannot be eliminated entirely as it is selected by the ISO and other setting factors that may induce noise. And why do you call noise grain? It's a digital, not a film camera. What looks like grain, not just in shadows, is pixelation usually resulting from too much sharpening.

And also I found very little difference other than optical in the Images I made with a $400 12MPX Sony cigarette package size P&S and my dSLR, that cost another $2500 without a lens!

Sorry I am not being contentious just to be a pain you know where, we really see things very differently. But from my perspective wouldn't life be a bore if we didn't.

I'm talking about small sensor point and shoot cameras, not DSLR's where the quality of the pixels is better. With the small cameras, there reaches a point of diminishing returns on how many megapixels squeezed into a small sensor will produce a good image.

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Your describing the situation on the assumption more image resolution does not contribute to more image quality. On that I have to disagree vehemently that given any print size chosen 8x10 or 11x14 a picture made from my old 8MPX dSLR compared to one made with my current 13MPX dSLR makes a dramatic difference in better quality you should definitely see unless you are legally blind.

You sound like the article on Michael Reichmann's web site where they wrote that you couldn't see the difference between a print from the Canon G10 and the 39 megapixel Hasselblad

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And also I found very little difference other than optical in the Images I made with a $400 12MPX Sony cigarette package size P&S and my dSLR, that cost another $2500 without a lens!

Larry,

I am not saying you are wrong in applying the criteria that you do. Those principle do apply, as size of each sensor site is reduced there is less light to generate a current from the site to trigger an acurate reading and pixel data output.

However, of all the technology venues chip R&D is maybe the fastest moving, most competitive and rapidly advancing. Just last year new silicon materials were developed which have a much higher light response -they are more efficient. Also this year new micro lenses that are on a layer sandwiched with the sensor layer that concentrate the light to focus it at the center of the sensor cell were introduced.

What I am saying is this technology is advancing at a very rapid rate and is far from static as your argument implies.

My e-mail box is full of development news every day in the chip technology industry. And unlike hardware like a camera body or lens, new chip designs apparently can be put into manufacture very rapidly once the design is completed. The new sensor chips show up in camera's very soon after a new technology breakthrough is public news.

With much lower sales volume the larger prosumer and professional dSLR chips evolve much slower from what my observations of the industry indicate. So they are likely to be much further behind in efficiency using the newest materials and design. This I think contributes to so little difference in output pixel data quality factors. These little P&S chips you deride may be years ahead in technology and efficiency of the low production volume big chips that MF and full-frame cameras are using.

PS Sigma just announced today a new DP2 that will be out early 2009. There are a few more details in my Shutterbug blog that I will post today.

I read about the DP2 last month. I also read that they will be lowering the price of the DP1 by $100 which will probably speed up the snails pace of it's sales. I had thought about getting one when I purchased the Ricoh GRD. I think that the longer I wait for my next point and shoot, the better chances of seeing a real breakthrough in image quality.

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Sigma just announced today a new DP2 that will be out early 2009. There are a few more details in my Shutterbug blog that I will post today.

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So, what is everyone else looking for in a compact camera?

I think it would be nice to have a fast 35mm (equivalent) prime on a sensor with extremely low noise at ISOs up to 1600 (and beyond someday). The micro four thirds system might just deliver in the next year or two. May as well throw in shake reduction technology since it's standard in compacts now.

My current compact, a Fuji F30, does a decent job at 800 ISO but there is certainly room for improvement.

If you don't ignore physics, the only way to get what you are wishing for is to use a 24x36mm sensor, like that in the Canon 5D Mark II, and an equivalent lens like a 45mm as a prime, but then it wouldn't be very compact, would it. The only REAL compromise is the Sigma DP-2, as its sensor is 3 stacked layers, one sandwiched on top of the other two to obtain an output of 14MPX.

But as Larry suggested it does not sell all that well, probably because compact customers also want cheap, and cheap is what cheap gets, neither anything very good in performance or worth having for any other reason.

In other words people dream about impossible cameras they cannot afford at any price.

I have to tell you, the Sigma DP2 is postively great! Yes it only has the 28mm lens (41mm equiv for 35mm film), but it is so small and convenient that it gets carried along much more often than the Canon 30D clunker I use for low-light shots. To see some of my results check out my website http://mysite.verizon.net/vzesfls5/files/.
The only problems I have at the moment are (1) the $150 price for the optional optical viewfinder, (2) the lack of a white balance setting called "none", and (3) the fact that every time the lens extends it sucks air (and probably dust) into the space between the lens and the sensor. To reduce the dust problem I can put a UV filter on the Sigma optional hood, which will really make the camera lens look big and professional.
I have a Lumix point-and-shoot camera that does this same lens extension trick when you turn it on, and it has sucked in a little dust in the 3-4 years I have had it. I can see dust specks inside the lens.
SLRs don't do this. That's a good thing. This camera stuff is a mixed bag. Always has been.
I too enjoyed shooting tri-x, developing it and printing it myself, and even pushing it from ASA400 to ASA800 and beyond (the contrast went way up). That was when I was in high school in the late 1960s. I still remember the smell of the developer and fixer, the hassle of washing the prints etc., but it is hard to forget the thrill of watching a really good image slowly rising out of blank whiteness on the photo paper.
Using the digital raw editors is similar and almost as pleasing, without the chemicals! The Sigma raw editor runs slowly on my 2GHz Windows XP computer, but the processing gradations available make it worth the wait. The Canon raw editor, by comparison, is rough (coarse in terms of adjustability).
What mystifies me about the Sigma DP2 is that the lens cannot be interchanged. Sigma is a lens manufacturer, and I cannot interchange the lens! Funny how I have not thought seriously about buying another lens in the 2-3 months since I got the camera. Sigma needs to remedy this problem, too!

I made the move from a big heavy dSLR system to a Sigma DP1s awhile back, choosing the 1 for the shorter lens, Focal Length 16.6mm F2.8 35mm equivalent to 28mm (on a 35mm). The DP2's have a longer lens, Focal Length 24.2mm F2.8, 35mm equivalent to 41mm (on a 35mm camera).

So instead of having interchangeable lenses, how about just getting a DP1x if you want a wide angle? It probably costs less than a good lens for a dSLR, and is smaller and easier to carry around than a dSLR with 2 lenses.

Your suggestion to simply get a DP1 for the wide-angle lens is a good one, but I am a little bit put off by the fact that the 16.6 mm lens of the DP1 and DP1s is only f 4.0.
On my DP2, the lens is f 2.8 and I am finding that a little bit slow for my tastes.
Sigma's latest SD15 with their latest optically stabilized zoom, the 17-50mm F2.8 EX DC OS HSM, looks like the best performance combination for me since the stabilization will allow me to use it in lower light. But this will be yet another big camera, which is what I would like to get away from. Looks like I might have to wait another decade!
Even if the 17-50mm F2.8 EX DC OS HSM were available on a DP-sized body, the combination would still be somewhat cumbersome too.
Great advances are being made in small back-lit sensors, which make possible smaller optics and good low light sensitivity. Maybe in the next few years we will see really high quality coming from small-sensor point-and-shoots, to rival SLRs of today.
Maybe I am really talking about something like the Canon S90, already producing very good results with a zoom lens that opens to f 2.0 at the wide end. Not quite up to the image quality of the DP series... yet.

I had the Sigma DP1 for about six months last year and eventually sold it for what I paid for it. I do love the 28mm focal length and wouldn't purchase a point and shoot that didn't offer it. I've been using the Ricoh GRD for the past three years and still love the image quality, especially for high ISO black and white. I'm considering getting the DP1s and just holding onto it no matter how little I use it because when I need 28mm, I need a high quality file. I use it for shooting booth images for artists at art shows. And carrying the DP1s is a lot more convenient than carrying a D700 with 28mm lens.

Maybe I should have said more about my history as a photographer as well as the few really great photographers who have not been replaced, like Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and my favorite guru Oliver Gagliani (and he had a smaller camera, a 5x7 Deardorff). With a few rare exceptions the younger "shooters" with their small cameras and fast lenses have not made more significant images outside of a few news and editorial photographers like W. Eugene Smith (who used a Rolleiflex TLR mostly).

Today we are too spoiled, and with little dedication to what we have to say with our images. Even though my Sigma DP1s is small and light I still keep a heavy Gitzo tripod in the trunk of my car, and use it when needed.

Sorry, I guess I spent too many years beginning in 1952 shooting 4x5 with a f4.5 lens, and then almost a decade later did most of my "work" photography with a f3.5 Rolleiflex. Sure after 1975 when I was an editor with Petersen's PhotoGraphic I shot a lot of 35mm stuff because that's what the readers were using. But most of the internal work, was done with 120 film and the fastest lens I had for my Rollei SLR was f2.8, and still did the really tough shots with 4x5 (Horseman).

So I don't complain about the gear out there, but with the attitudes and philosophy of those who think it is an answer to better photography. That, I have not seen progress in regardless of all the new and amazing gizmos that have been put on store shelves over the years.

I currently like the Fujifilm FinePix F80EXR and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7. I'm certainly looking forward to the next-gen models of the micro four thirds compacts as well.

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