Like many other advanced amateur photographers I’ve been yearning for the perfect compact digital camera. I do have my Canon 30D which shoots excellent images, along with a bunch of heavy and relatively expensive lenses but obviously I can’t carry all that in my pocket at all times. Besides, there are times when I simply want to take a walk and not have to worry about 5 pounds of stuff hanging from my shoulder.

Of course, being an advanced amateur and having used DSLR cameras for a few years, image quality is very important for me, especially high-ISO quality where all compact digital cameras fail. All? Yes, all. That is my firm belief. [OK, perhaps excluding the new Sigma DP-1 but that one hasn't been released yet, much less extensively tested]. Having established that image quality for compact digitals sucks, what would be the ideal small digital camera then?

Now please keep in mind that these are my personal ruminations and they may not be compatible with anyone else’s desires. I’m sure though that not many people would disagree with the feature that I am suggesting. Are these features practical and will we ever see them in a production camera? Probably not too soon. Hopefully within the next 10 years.

As a building block for the perfect compact digital camera I will use the Canon G9 (hands-on review coming soon). I could also use the Ricoh GR-D or GX100 which are amazing feature-packed little cameras unfortunately let down by the image quality (as always). I’ve chosen the G9 because Canon’s G series was destined for greatness until – of course – the imbeciles from the marketing department laid their dirty paws on it. I’ve been wanting this camera since it was released and in the end I decided not to buy it after all but that’s another story.

I think the G9 has some of the ingredients for awesomeness, so much so that what I will be describing next may well be a distant future prodigy of the current iteration. So here goes…

Body construction – the G9 has got it right: rock solid magnesium body, decent size although not pocketable, slightly porky weight-wise but very re-assuring to hold. I would also love to see a proper metal battery/memory card cover, something that most cameras (including DSLRs) tend to omit. Weatherproofing would be awesome but I’m not sure that would be doable in such a camera. It would also probably shoot the price up by $100 or more.

Sensor – APS-C at the very least. Full-frame would be really nice but it would make the whole thing prohibitively expensive so I won’t consider it necessary. APS-C would make me very happy. If Canon can put such a sensor in a $600 Digital Rebel, I’m sure they could put one in a G. Also, keep the megapixels at or below 10. Seriously, ditch this “the more MP, the better” crap.

Lens – 24-72mm (like the Ricoh GX100 has) would be nice. That means “only” a 3x zoom but screw the marketing department. Make it bright. f/2 (wide) – f/4 (tele) or better should be doable. It should use high quality coated lenses for a sharp image with good contrast and color, no distortions, chromatic aberrations and as little flare/ghosting as possible. With all these features I’m not sure a fully retractable lens would be possible but I can live with a small barrel protruding.

AF – use a high speed, silent USM-like motor. Maybe use a dedicated AF sensor for higher speed and precision. A ring for manual focusing would be awesome. Not sure that would be doable with a collapsing lens.

LCD – 3″ 900K+ dot screen. Make it twist and swivel, just like the older Canon G series. OLED would be even nicer.

Flash hot-shoe – a must. End of discussion.

Image stabilization – definitely. In lens IS seems to be better than the sensor-shift variety.

ISO – on an APS-C sensor ISO should easily go to 6400.

Controls – I like the ones on the G9, especially the wheel surrounding the directional keys. Keep that and also keep the ISO dial. Make sure there are buttons for all the important controls. Add a couple of fully customizable buttons.

Operation – I don’t see why a compact camera shouldn’t operate quickly (power up/down, focusing, shutter lag, navigation, etc.) since most of them are using the same processors as their DSLR cousins.

Viewfinder – rather than having something useless like in the G9, I would rather do without. I don’t think a large viewfinder in a small, compact body would be possible though.

Storage/power – SD/SDHC of course, with a high capacity lithium battery. Provide an A/C power input.

Image formats – RAW, RAW + JPG (allow selection of various JPG sizes and compressions), JPG

Video – HD would probably be too much to ask for, although definitely doable, so I would be satisfied with a maximum 1024 resolution @ 30fps. A high speed, low-res mode, say @ 60fps would be nice. Definitely allow zooming, AF and IS during video recording, as well as being able to pause the video.

Time-lapse video – this feature is amazing and I can’t believe that so few digital cameras have it. Make a highly customizable time-lapse mode. Allow me to set the delay between shots from 1 second to… 15 minutes or so. Allow me to choose the resolution of the movie and the frame rate. Combine the frames into movies running at 15fps, 30fps and 60fps (why not?). Zooming during time-lapse recording would be awesome. For longer delays between frames put the camera into a pseudo-sleep mode to conserve battery and allow the LCD to be turned off during filming.

Integrated flash – for those times when you don’t have your radio slaves with you.

Remote control – an IR remote control like on the older Canon G cameras would be very nice.

Price – if the ideal camera had all of the above I would easily pay $2000 for it or perhaps even more, although I’m sure everyone would prefer a $1000 price point.

This concludes my wish list for the perfect camera. It is probably incomplete but it’s all I could think of for now. I will add to it as I think of other features that I would like.

Now the question remains whether there will ever be such a camera. Not if the marketing department gets their way. I was hoping that Canon would have the resources to build something like this but unfortunately it doesn’t seem that they care about their compact range anymore so maybe we should keep an eye out for smaller players like Sigma (the DP-1 is a good start), Ricoh or even Nikon.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 8:25 pm and is filed under Article. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.