Canon 50D and the Megapixel Race

Canon has just announced the new 50D. I suppose I'm a little bitter about this - I bought a 40D less than one year ago, not too long after its introduction. For once in my photo life, I wanted a new camera with fresh technology (as opposed to buying an older and/or used model like I usually do). Oh well, you can't keep up with technology unless you want to constantly spend money :-)

The 50D's 15 MP (megapixels) jumps the count up from the 40D's 10 MP. I thought the megapixel race was over or at least slowing down because manufacturers were finally coming to their senses. I guess not.

Canon claims that the 50D's microlenses occupy nearly 100% of each photosite (as opposed to microlenses of previous models which presumably didn't fill up each photosite). Because of this, the 50D's sensor should not suffer from increased noise levels at high ISOs (the typical result when you cram more MP's into a given sensor area thus making each photosite smaller). In fact, Canon claims the noise levels to be approximately 1.5 stops better than the 40D. Their claim is reflected in the ISO settings of the 50D - the highest (in expanded mode) is 12,800. The highest on the 40D is ISO 3200.

As my grandfather was famous for saying, "We'll see..."

Interestingly, if you take the 50D's pixel density and apply it to a full frame sensor, you get a 39 MP chip. Whoa...