Canon must have spoiled me with the SD4000. Their first back-illuminated CMOS (I’ll call this BICMOS for short) camera was a surprise and I had hoped we’d be seeing that sensor technology creeping in to other cameras soon. While Canon is updating the SD4000 with the new SD4500, using the same sort of Canon-made sensor, it seems it may not be moving to anything else just yet.
The new S95 uses a 10mp CCD much like its precursor the S90. The G12 will have the same sensor according to a leak from CNET. Canon’s playing it safe with these incremental upgrades to two wildly successful cameras and this might mean it could be at least another year before a BICMOS sensor hits these camera lines.
HD video and improved IS are nice, but I really hoped to see Canon try something bold here. Even with these yawntastic changes it probably won’t hurt them any but they do have some competition: Samsung’s relatively recent entry in to the advanced P&S segment (the TL500 aka EX1) and Panasonic’s LX5 (a playing-it-safe update to the excellent LX3). If the BICMOS sensor in SD4000 hadn’t worked out so well I wouldn’t be saying this, but now I have trouble caring much about a Canon P&S with a CCD sensor. Technical questions of BICMOS vs the current CCDs aside, it looks like we will be seeing more and more of these new CMOS sensors in all kinds of cameras, Canon isn’t the only one moving in to this technology.
Maybe they’ll announce sister cameras like they did with the SX1 but if not we may be waiting a while for BICMOS in the G series. Maybe they’ll bring back the f/2.0 lens at the same time.
