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Home / Digital cameras / CES 2009
Buy Now or Wait for a New Digital Camera?By Mike Perlman, 16 January 2009
It's early in the digital camera season for any prospective superstars to emerge. We'll tell you why it's important to guard that piggy bank for another month or two.

First off, CES is the "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!" for camcorders. And although quite a few digital cameras were announced at CES this year, companies such as Canon and Nikon have yet to announce their 2009 models. PMA, the digital camera industry's trade show, is scheduled to run early in March this year, and we're expecting to see several new camera announcemens being made in mid-February right up until PMA's debut.

That said, we did see a number of digital cameras at CES 2009 that were interesting, though most of them will not hit store shelves until March or April anyway:

Casio is doing admirable things with their new super-compact Exilim line, offering high-speed burst modes and high-speed video up to 1,000fps in an ultra-portable camera the size of a credit card. We'd say that's worth sticking around for, especially if you couldn't justify dropping 600 smackers on the Casio Exilim EX-FH20.

Additionally, Samsung's ridiculously thin 12-megapixel TL100 is quite a looker and their new HZ10W will interest advanced shooters, thanks to its 24mm wide-angle lens and 10x optical zoom. The Pentax Optio P70, which is scheduled to be released in February, was definitely one of the sexiest cameras we had the pleasure of holding, but there were no major breakthroughs to speak of.

Perhaps the one digital camera that is worth considering right now, is the new Sony Cyber-shot DSC-G3. We checked it out at CES 2009, and it promises direct upload of images to the Web via its Wi-Fi connection and Web browser. That said, our experience with Wi-Fi enabled digital cameras in general has not been the best in the past, so you should at least hold on tightly to your credit card until we post our full review.

Olympus also made a range of announcements during CES 2009, such as the rugged Olympus Tough 8000 and the Olympus SP-590UZ 26x optical mega-zoom cameras. The former should be arriving in stores as we speak, but we urge you to wait for our in-depth testing of its water/shock/freeze/dust/shake/crush-proof abilites before making the jump.

Overall, our general recommendation is to stay cool when it comes to investing in a new digital camera at this point. But of course, if you absolutely need a new camera now, you'll find our best of the best here.
Best Point-and-shoot cameras
Name Score Price
C
Canon PowerShot SD990 IS 74% $400
Fujifilm Finepix F200EXR 74% $400
Canon PowerShot SD970 IS 74% $380
Canon PowerShot SD890 IS 72% $300
Canon PowerShot SD960 IS 71% $330
Nikon Coolpix S710 70% $380
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX35 69% $225
Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS1 69% $400
Canon PowerShot A2100 IS 69% $250
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX580 68% $400
Canon PowerShot SD780 IS 68% $280
Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS 68% $230
Canon PowerShot SD770 IS 67% $215
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX500 67% $400
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX150 66% $300
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX48 66% $350
Canon PowerShot A1100 IS 66% $200
Canon PowerShot A580 65% $140
Casio Exilim EX-FC100 65% $350
Samsung SL820 65% $280
Canon PowerShot A470 64% $110
Nikon Coolpix S630 63% $280
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W230 63% $200
Canon PowerShot A480 63% $130
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900 62% $380
Click here to see full and advanced chart »
 
 
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