Ah, the cruelty of rapid refresh cycles. It was only six months ago that the
well reviewed CX1 hit the scene, but already Ricoh is trotting out its replacement in the form of the CX2. You needn't fret though, as the new shooter retains its predecessor's winning features while adding a few goodies of its own. The zoom has gone from 7.1x to 10.7x, taking it comfortably into the
superzoom category, continuous shooting gets upgraded from 4 to 5 fps, and face detection and AF have been enhanced. The latter features should make the new cam easier to use for novices, but when you add up the whole package -- including the already competent 9 megapixel CMOS sensor and
HDR imaging capabilities inherited from the CX1 -- you have to wonder if this camera isn't
too good for the point and shoot moniker. Suggested UK price is £299.99 ($495), and it should be available in early September.
[Via
Akihabara News]
posted Aug 20th 2009 4:18AM
it will be available on september, can`t wait?
great. another camera for me to look at. Though, have to admit I have yet to see the first one anywhere yet, and I've been looking too.
When I said I cant find it I mean instore, I always like playing with stuff a bit before actually dropping money on it
It's a nice pocket camera, nothing more. Don't kid yourself... Getting 3 clean 12mp per second images from an SLR is still much better than getting 5 blurry over-processed 12mp images from this point-n-poop.
How would you go about getting noisy 12mp images from the 9mp sensor in this particular "point and poop"? It'd probably be a good idea for you to know something about the product before you label and slate it.
The CX1 (on which this is based) actually gets quite a few plaudits for not pointlessly cramming in too many pixels, and producing pretty clean images as a result. Canon have just latched onto the same trend with their G11 and S90, both with 10mp (4.5 less than the G10) but much cleaner performance in low light. They're getting serious about producing compacts that can challenge SLRs for actual image quality.
Sure, the sensors in compacts are smaller (with one or two notable exceptions) but with manufacturers actually accounting sensibly for that rather playing the megapixel race, the difference in image quality doesn't have to be anything like as inevitable as you're suggesting. Weigh it up against the obvious advantages of having all that in a small pocketable form rather than a weighty, bulky system camera, and things aren't so black and white anymore.
For me, the only real dissapointment in the CX2 (and 1) is no proper manual mode - I don't see why the user shouldn't have straightforward access to the aperture and shutter speed if they want it. Canon provide it on the G11 and (smaller, much more pocketable) S90 though, as do Nikon on the P6000 which is also due an update. I'm hopeful they'll also follow this new trend towards less megapixels and higher quality.
I don't care about the big zoom.
Give me RAW!!!