Canon finally reversing their high megapixel trend

Today, Canon announced the Canon G11, a large sized point-and-shoot camera. The intended audience for the G-- series cameras include professionals and serious enthusiasts who use it in conjunction with their big SLR bodies. It is only 10MP. Interesting, the older Canon G10 had a whopping 14MP. It appears that Canon reversed the high-megapixel trend. What happened?

Well, remember the old post I made "High megapixel cameras preferred by lousy photographers"? For the past 3 years or so, Canon has making higher and higher megapixel cameras, esp. on small sensored point-and-shoot cameras. They have been doing so, because the laymen thinks that the higher the megapixel, the better it is. To Canon, the higher megapixels the cameras, the better they sell, so they kept going higher and higher. It is no different than a car maker enticing teenager drivers with meaningless specs like horsepower and torque. In the old days, the higher the horsepower and torque a car had, the better they sold. But then people got smarter, and realized that there was so much more that makes a car than horsepower/torque... things like comfort, mileage, ergonomics, reliability, cost of ownership, insurance rate, etc. As the car manufacturers mature, they started reversing the big horsepower trend.

IMHO, today is the day we can mark that the digital camera market is maturing. The fact that Canon reversed its high-megapixel trend, is a sign that digital camera shoppers are finally getting smarter, and more matured. They are now realizing that higher megapixel doesn't equate to a better camera. Let's take a quick look at images from the old G10. At the lowest ISO of 80, the images from the old Canon G10 (with a whopping 14MP) looks spectacular. But at the higher spectrum (1600-3200), it is completely unusable. It is grainy. It is artificial. It is ugly. As mentioned in my old blog previously, the trade-off for having high megapixel is 1) higher noise at higher ISO and 2) unusable pictures at less than ideal lighting situation. Granted, if the purpose of a camera is to use it during an ideal bright day or in a studio, a high megapixel is perfect for the job. But most people shoot in all conditions, day and night, indoors and outdoors, and most of the time in less than ideal lighting situation.

Let's take a look at a picture from a G10 (Courtesy of http://www.imaging-resource.com/):

100% crop shot at 100 ISO. It's got great tones, colors, and details:

100% crop shot at 1600 ISO. Look at the massive amount of in-camera noise reduction applied to the picture. It's very digital/artificial. It's ugly! We don't need to look at 3200 ISO even though the G10 can go up to 3200 ISO. That high ISO is marketing BS from Canon.

Not many people have had a chance to play with a G11 or look at sample pictures online, but the fact is clear-- Canon is reversing this high-megapixel non-sense. Personally, I think this is an indication that 1) the laymen are slowly recognizing that higher megapixel doesn't equate to better pictures 2) Canon is responding to the market demand, and making a camera that is more capable in less than ideal situations (vs. a high megapixel camera that sells well). In the past few years, numerous posts on photography forums indicate that people are now realizing that high megapixels means trading off resolution for image quality. Kudos to Canon for making a lower megapixel camera that shoots well, and kudos to all the buyers out there resisting buying a camera with high megapixels.

The digital camera market is maturing.