[xanonlinexan]

...sorry if this is a stupid question but why is it that prosumer cameras like the Fuji 9000, Canon S3, Panasonic fx30, etc. suffer much worse noise esp. at ISO 400 when compared to Digital SLR cameras? Is it anything to do with these superzoom lenses they use on the prosumer models?

[draigenia]

It has to do with the fact that the sensor used on these point and shoot/prosumer models tend to have much smaller sensor sizes dispite feature close to or a greater number or actual pixels. Because of the smaller size of sensor and thus smaller pixels sizes each pixel is limited in comparison to the larger pixels on a dslr's sensor in relation to the number of photons being gathered in the pixel well of the pixel. A reduction on photons leads to a reduction in the potential signal to noise ratio from that pixel which means a great boost is needed. This leads to increase noise properties.... of cource this is also assuming all things like manufacturing technologies are equil between the two different sensor sizes.

There however is always great and never ended advances in digitial imaging sensor technologies. Up until the end of 2005 the great race was the pixel race; how many Mpixels a given sensor has. For the most part in 2006 that race is winding down although we are now seeing the same top pixel count slowly move down from larger chips to smaller models (how we used to only have 8Mpixels available on a 2/3" sensor in 2004, then 8Mpixels on a 1/1.8" sensor in 2005 and now 8Mpixels 1/2.5" sensors have been anounced. It seens in 2006 the race is on to offer point and shoot/prosumer models a much greater range of iso settings. Unfortunately for every manufacture but 1 this involves using some sort of in-camera noise reduction system which is the same thing we can do on our computers usually to a better end result. This incamera noise reduction leads to a great reduction in pixel sharpness and overall picture quality. There is some good news however as Fuji seems to have figured out how to manufacture a small sensor still capable of producing very good and comparible in most instances to a dslr's high iso noise results. I'm sure eventually in the coming years this same technology will be figured out or copied by other sensor manufactures.

Then again if that same technology thats used in the 1/1.7" sensor of the F10/F11/F30 to produce usable iso1600 or 3200 in the case of the F30 was utilized in a sensor say the APS sized sensor of all the Nikon DSLR's you could see very clean iso3200 with usable iso6400 or perhaps software cleanable iso12800 shots... Market demand always seens to dictate features.

[NumsAmenniams]

Thank you.