Small cool news ... even if some of them might look bad :)

Today Panasonic is trying to prove me wrong in my megapixel prediction - they have just launched FZ50, LX2, FX50, FX07 and FX03 - all basically upgrading with more megapixels some corresponding previous models - but the trick is that actually the images just have a large amount of in-camera noise reduction and I expect that the in-depth reviews that will soon surface to just show that more is not always much better ... That being said FX50/FX07 pair (the difference seems to be 99.99% just the LCD size) looks like a decent upgrade for FX01 and for people that can afford it the new LX2 (probably together with the almost identical but even more expensive model that will probably come under the Leica name) might be a good camera to carry inside your pocket - but most existing LX1 owners (and also some Ricoh R4 owners :) ) will not feel ANY pressure at all to upgrade!

It is however fair to also say that even if the megapixel benefits will be probably invisible over older models correctly processed with a good noise-reduction program, the ordinary customer (on his first digital camera or upgrading his older 2-3 megapixel camera) will still get a decent deal - since 99% of the users will never care about any digital postprocessing, so for them the in-camera noise reduction will just be a large bonus!!!

Since we are on photography here are two other very nice Ricoh R3/R4 links that I might have missed with my original R4 post - a Ricoh Caplio R3 review with a LOT of valuable information and hints (and the site has many other interesting pages) and a second Ricoh Caplio R3 review ! (R3 is pretty much an R4 with an older sensor, LCD and firmware - but the tricks on those pages are also very valuable on the R4 - Ricoh cameras seem to reward users that are not afraid to learn a little). And here is another interesting page - it is called 'Enough already with the megapixels' :)

And back to the world of computers - in a previous post I was suggesting it might be a wise move for Microsoft "to use the huge pile of MS money and buy a few small companies with 'power user toys' that should be added as optional features in the higher-end versions of Vista" - probably BillG is not reading my ramblings but I am still happy that Microsoft has just acquired one of my favorite small software companies - Winternals/Sysinternals - well done Mark and Bryce !!!

And since this post was so much about newer photo stuff not being so much better than the older things I will end with some words on how some of the new stuff that looks terribly wrong is also not so bad after all - if you take a look at the link you will see a rather interesting article by George Munday decrying the direction taken by the latest business models in professional photography - but while I understand the pressure on the author I certainly can't agree with his conclusion that the business model is deeply flawed - much cheaper content is simply the natural evolution that we see today in ALL aspects of life (including hardware, software, music, film and so on) and content creators of all kinds will just simply have to learn how to live with that !!!