That’s an interesting observation on your part as well.

I guess at the end of the day, even for a gear-head like myself, I just want to have full confidence that the money I spend is on a camera I know wasn’t compromised in a way that it will impact me personally.

Hopefully one day, I’ll be able to look past all this, and enjoy the true nature and essence of photography.

All the best on your journey too, and thank you so much for dropping by, not to mention your lengthy comment as well.

I had the same feeling about Canon recently when I read a review of the new Canon superzoom camera, SX20 IS. While Canon improved a number of things on the model it was based on, the SX10 IS (after apparently forced by competitors like the Lumix FZ35), some features originally on the SX10 were removed! That seemed like another “smart” marketing move to distance this new model from a higher model, the SX1 IS. Or is it to let the remaining SX10 sell better? The SX1 really should be updated as well. What is more annoying is that one “enhancement” is a change from 10MP to 12MP, a move that actually made images in the new model noisier, as reported by both PhotographyBlog and CameraLabs. Here is an extract from a great review by CameraLabs:

“But back to the SX20 IS downsides, which include even slower continuous shooting than its predecessor. If you thought the 1.4fps of the SX10 IS was useless, then how about having 1fps on the SX20 IS? You may be able to keep shooting until you run out of memory, but with most action sequences over in a second or two, you’re unlikely to capture them with this camera.

Before making our usual comparisons with rival models, it’s finally worth noting a couple of handy features from the SX10 IS have mysteriously disappeared. The Sound Recorder, buried in the SX10 IS’s playback menus, could capture up to two hours of high quality audio – great for interviews, but sadly not present on the new model.

The SX20 IS may now have scene detection, but the Auto ISO Shift facility of the SX10 IS has gone. This could optionally suggest a higher ISO if it thought your manual setting would result in camera shake. A little nannying, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Arguably the worst omission though is the absence of its predecessor’s SuperFine JPEG option. Now the SX20 IS is limited to just Normal or Fine compression, and it’s quite revealing to compare file sizes in our Galleries between it and the Panasonic FZ38 / FZ35 – given both share the same resolution. Big memory cards are cheap, so it seems odd to remove any milder compression settings for no good reason.”