Compact Camera News

Canon just took the wraps off of a very cool new camera: the PowerShot G3 X, which boasts a 25x optical lens with image stabilization and a one-inch, 20.2-megapixel CMOS sensor. For those keeping score at home that means this relatively compact camera has a zoom lens equivalent to 24-600mm with an aperture range of f/2.8-f/5.6.

Leica just unveiled a slick, new compact camera this morning: the 24-megapixel, full frame Leica Q. The Leica Q camera features a Leica Summilux 28mm f /1.7 ASPH integrated lens and a host of features, making it Leica’s premium compact camera.

Panasonic’s LX100 is the top-of-the-line camera in the company’s compact LX series. Compared to other LX models, it is the first camera with an MFT (Micro Four Thirds) sensor. However, the camera doesn’t use the whole image sensor area of 17.3x13mm, so its crop factor is 2.2x instead of the 2.0x of standard MFT cameras.

Olympus announced its latest waterproof, crushproof, shockproof, freezeproof compact digital camera this morning: the 16-megapixel Stylus Tough TG-4.

Meet Rambo, an octopus at a New Zealand aquarium that's trained to take photos of tourists with a Sony camera. It’s an amazing stunt, which you can see in the below video, but not all that surprising if you know a thing or two about octopuses, which are some of the cleverest undersea creatures out there.

Photokina 2014 in Germany has been covered widely on the Internet already—including our own extensive reporting on the show on Shutterbug.com—so there’s no need for me to rehash the major announcements from the event, such as the latest full-frame cameras from Canon and Nikon and the like. My photo report here is aimed at sharing some wider ranging thoughts and perspectives on this important biennial show and what it told us about photography today and where it might be heading tomorrow.

For a compact camera, the Canon PowerShot G1 X Mark II has a large image sensor; in fact, it is slightly larger than the sensor found in Micro Four Thirds cameras. The G1 X II offers a moderate resolution of 13 megapixels, with maximum resolution in images with an aspect ratio of 4:3. By default, however, the camera is set to an aspect ratio of 3:2 that delivers slightly less image resolution.