Compact

Olympus has designed a fine camera in the new 8-megapixel C-8080. After shooting with it for a while, I found the camera to be well worth considering, even if you don't need the added megapixels, just because of the rich feature set it offers.

If you've snorkeled or scuba dived on vacation, you already know about the amazing world that lies beneath the water's surface. The remarkable creatures and seascapes are so stunning that they beg to be captured in photographs. Thankfully, you don't have to be a professional photographer with expensive gear to take dramatic underwater images.

Designed for the serious photographer who wants extensive controls in a compact package, the 8-megapixel Nikon Coolpix 8700 delivers. Weighing only 17 ounces, it's amazing how much camera Nikon fits into such a small package. The design of the generous 35-280mm ED zoom lens includes extra-low dispersion glass, which ensures improved color accuracy and contrast. As well as including its best glass in the lens design, the camera has a precise, 256-segment Matrix metering system, a five-area autofocus sensor and an accurate flash exposure meter.

Sophisticated technology goes into the design and manufacture of your digital camera. Understanding some of that technology can help you to predict how the camera will fare when you're shooting in a variety of situations. For our annual How-To issue, we're including this article on the anatomy of an image sensor.

After nearly seven years as an editor here at PCPhoto, I recently purchased my first digital camera. I've been shooting with digital cameras all along, but since there's a constant flow of the latest and greatest equipment through our offices, I never felt compelled to commit myself to a purchase. Content with just borrowing a camera for a time, I was reluctant to buy because I assumed that something better would always be on the horizon.

Canon's latest G-series camera, the PowerShot G6, takes the advanced compact digital camera to a new level with its smart design, full range of features and 7.1-megapixel sensor. Offering all the photographic controls you'd expect from a digital SLR in a far more compact package, it's a camera you can take with you anywhere, always ready and highly capable.

As photographers, we've always faced choices—automatic exposure vs. manual, slides vs. negatives, large format vs. 35mm. It's no surprise, then, that digital photography has created another one—digital SLR (D-SLR) vs. advanced compact. Both camera types offer their own advantages and disadvantages; which one is best for you depends on the kind of images you like to shoot and the trade-offs you're willing to make.

The recent history of digital photography could be described as a megapixel war. With technological advancements that often come every six months, new cameras with higher pixel counts are available almost constantly. It isn't uncommon for photographers to find themselves buying a digital camera to replace the model they purchased only the year before in the endless arms race to garner the most megapixels.

With digital SLRs now widely available at advanced compact prices, you might be wondering if the ultra-compact cameras are destined to devolve into an amateur-only plaything. Those of us who have been photographing for many years remember that 35mm compact cameras were feature-anemic compared to 35mm SLRs and usually warranted the "point-and-shoot" moniker.

Sony's Cyber-shot DSC-R1 features an electronic eye-level viewfinder like those in high-end compact digital cameras, along with a swiveling/tilting two-inch external LCD monitor that shows the image live, just like the monitors on compact digital cameras. The big news is that this live image is produced by a huge (for an all-in-one camera) APS-C-sized, 10.3-megapixel, Sony-produced CMOS image sensor. This brings together, for the first time, the all-in-one convenience and live-view features of a compact digital camera with the imaging capabilities of a 10.3-megapixel image sensor some 12 times the size of the sensors found in most compact cameras.