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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.
TOP 5 PERFORMANCE CAMERAS
Name Score Price
Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 84% $670
Panasonic Lumix DMC-G10 82% $600
Canon PowerShot G12 80% $500
Olympus E-P2 80%
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Olympus E-PL1 80% $600
EXPAND PERFORMANCE CAMERA CHART »


TOP 5 P&S CAMERAS
Name Score Price
Canon PowerShot S95 78% $400
Canon PowerShot SX230 HS 76% $350
Nikon Coolpix S9100 75% $330
Canon PowerShot SD4500 IS 74% $325
Nikon Coolpix S8100 74% $300
EXPAND P&S CAMERA CHART »


TOP 5 DSLR CAMERAS
Name Score Price
Nikon D7000 89% $1200
Nikon D700 89% $3000
Pentax K-r 88% $800
Canon EOS 5D Mark II 88% $2700
Pentax K-7 87% $1300
EXPAND DSLR CAMERA CHART »
 
 
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