Fuji will be taking the wraps off their new S5 Pro (what happened to S4?) at Photokina tomorrow and as expected it's essentially a Nikon with Fuji's own HDR twin sensors in place of the grainy Sony jobbies the Nikons are saddled with. See more on this model here.

Canon will be launching a range of portable media storage systems amongst other things whilst Leica will be showing off a raft of new cameras including the Digilux 3 with interchangeable lenses and the D-LUX 3 - essentially the new Panasonic Lumix 10MP compact in it's party clothes. so very desirable indeed then.

that fuji with its funky two sensor cells per pixels and high dynamic range will be worth looking out for

having done some experiments in hdr multi exposure techniques im really interested to see how well that performs

not that im planning to switch from canon to nikon mount lenses any time soon ;)

well the HDR capabilities of the S3 were almost the stuff of legend and this time around Fuji look like they have improved it further still with the option of the user being able to modify the amount of dynamic range at will as well as new software in camera to simulate film effects. The S3 was always rated as having the best dynamic range of the DSLR's.

looks awesome, what kind of price do you think it will come in at?

hopefully more details will be made available after the shows launch.

What a difference a couple of years makes, if you look back at the last Photokina show, the state of the art prosumer cameras were cutting edge 8mp jobbies and compacts trailing far behind them in power and quality. Jump forward to this years event and the minimum benchmark for compacts now appears to be the 10MP mark and even 14MP compacts (Sigma’s tricky triple layered sensor baby). Higher end stuff seams to be following the trend of not improving pixel count but instead focusing on improving quality of the capture – such as Fuji and Hasselblad’s new offerings. It would seam the era of the disposable digital camera grows ever nearer too with Disney launching a raft of 3MP digital cameras aimed at junior snappers – all for less than twenty dollars……

Phone cameras seam to be taking a leap as well with Nokia launching a new phone with a carl zeiss lens and a 5mp sensor as well dvd quality video recording and playback and Canon have raised the bar too on professional quality printing with their new twelve colour wide format proofers featuring both standard and light CMYK ink sets as well RGB inks to boot offering flawless colour reproduction so expect that to filter down to home users in about 12 months or so. Can’t wait.

You mention the higher end of the dslr range is concentrating on improving quality and not pixel count. Is this true at the lower end? Sony, Nikon and Canon have all introduced 10mp models, for Nikon this is a 4mp jump from the model it replaces. I assume the sensors aren't getting any bigger. Is it possible that cramming an extra 4mp into a sensor could have a detrimental effect on image quality?
I'm quite interested in the current batch of cameras, now that most have some form of image stabilization and/or sensor cleaning system. I'm not that clued up about all of this but I hope improving image quality hasn't taken a backseat to more pixels and gizmos!

"Is it possible that cramming an extra 4mp into a sensor could have a detrimental effect on image quality? " --- Yep, that's a definite possibility. More pixels in the same area means less area per pixel and less light captured per pixel, thus making it harder to get a good Signal-to-Noise ratio. So, image quality might be there, but at the expense of High-ISO noise.

We'll have to see if advances in technology deliver better sensors with better sensitivity to cram more of them into a smaller area ;-)

Canon have said that the 1DSMk2 is about as high as MP should/need to go in DSLR's and that future R&D will focus on improving sensor capture quality instead, seamingly via the use of hi def style triple 'sandwiched' red, green & blue sensors. Sigma's new cams launched at Photokina use a version of this technology too.

Interesting, look forward to seeing how far they can go in improving image quality.
I've just read a review of the Nikon D80 in a magazine, it got 5 stars for image quality and 5 stars overall, they couldn't find any cons with it at all?!?!?!?! I quote "The D80 is the best D-SLR an enthusiast photographer could buy at the moment"..............which is a bold statement, has the 400D been released over here yet? Having read a few different publications in my time I do know that certain magazines will lean towards either Canon or Nikon ;-)

depends on how many freebies the editor gets from the respective manufacturers I guess - I tend to read the Amateur Photographer magazine for cam reviews as they seam to be equally scathing to all cameras when it comes to their flaws.

Lol! I do like amateur photgrapher, they do tend to give it to you straight. I think that's how I ended up with my current camera, they gave it a reasonably good review.

At first glance the new sigma ‘sandwich sensor’ cameras appear to be very interesting, they eschew any fancy or unnecessary features in favour of a simple robust camera that takes excellent shots. I had a quick look at their preview site and the quality of the images both in colour range and detail looks staggering. It’s priced at around the Nikon D200 range but you are restricted to using Sigma lenses also. Not necessarily a bad thing but maybe a turn off for users who don’t like proprietary lens systems. You can find out more info and see some superb example captures here.