Best Pocket Camera?
 

Looking for a good pocket camera with the following:
1. Shoots RAW
2. Good low light
3. Good zoom (4x-10x)

Panasonic LX3, Canon G10, Sigma DP2, others?

Try dpreview.com/reviews/compare.asp. (As long as your pocket is not too small, both the LX3 and G10 will be great choices. I can suggest Ricoh GX100 or GX200 as well.)

Dpreview has also published a pretty good series of comparisons of different compacts. Probably closest to you spec is the "enthusiast" group at:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/Q408enthusiastgroup/

You might also want to check the premium group test.

The Sigma DP2 is too now to have made the tests, though.

Cheers,
T.

Any rumors about a Nikon equivalent of the G10?

the key to decent low light performance is a larger sensor (i.e. what's in a dslr) versus the tiny sensors in the typical compact camera. there has been some talk of a large sensor compact camera from nikon as well as from other companies for quite some time, but nothing yet. maybe at pma 2009. olympus plans on a micro-4/3 compact which could be good. i think the market is ready for it, especially since dslr sales have slowed down a little.

nikon's coolpix line used to be great (the cp990 was and still is a classic) but now the coolpixes are nothing special. the sigma dp2 will have a dslr sized sensor but foveon has its own set of problems and it is probably going to be a disaster just like its predecessor.

Most frequently G10 was compared to the Nikon Coolpix P6000, which was introduced just a few weeks before the G10.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canong10/page18.asp

I use the older P5000 for travel.

Sensor size reduction is driven by cost. The Nikon D40 at <$400 is a bargain since its sensor is the same size as D300. The cost to product a wafer is the same for 6MP sensor as for 14MP sensor.

The problem also relates to getting a decent zoom into a small package. The Sigma is a fixed focal length lens?

I have many older large sensor Coolpixs, 880, 995, 5000, 5700, 8400, 8800. They have great dynamic range. Low light noise performance are just so so. They are very slow by today's standards. These cameras sold for $500-$1000 at the time and highend P&S today are only $450 or so.

None of the Nikons shoots RAW - correct?

P6000 has the oft critizied RAW format made for the MS software.

Most older Coolpix and Nikon DSLR use the normal NEF RAW format.

true but the d40 has an older generation sensor, fewer features and it's not built as well as the d300. not all of the cost is the sensor. also, fabbing a full frame sensor today requires multiple exposures which drives up the cost. that'll change, eventually.
the sigma dp1 has a 16mm f/4 lens (equivalent to 28mm). compare that with 35mm compact film cameras such as the olympus xa which had a 'full frame' sensor, aka film, and a 35mm f/2.8 lens. putting in an aps sized sensor, or even easier, a 4/3rds sensor, into a compact camera is not all that difficult. it can be done, it's just that the camera makers haven't seen the need for it. yet. i expect that to change soon, hopefully by pma.
for compact cameras perhaps but a camera with a larger sensor will have better dynamic range.
don't remind me. :) i paid $900 for my coolpix 990 plus an additional $275 for a huge (back then) 128 meg flash card. now that buys a d90 slr and a decent lens along with a couple of flash cards.

CCDs still require special wafer process. Often CMOS wafers are farmed out to a foundry service. They don't really care what is on the wafer and each 8 inch wafer usually cost about $800 or so. Older senor are a little bit cheaper since the mask set would be fully depreciated. But they usually only cost about $1M per set. Packaging cost is very similar.

So for practical purposes same physical size sensors cost about the same to make regardless of the pixel count.

More over, D40 sensor has about the same pixel density as a full frame D700 sensor. Then low light and dynamic range capability of the sensors are roughly equal.

So that is why I think D40 is such a bargain.

But resolution is not equal. If one's okay with 6MP, then sure.

Sure, I am just referring to cost of producing the sensor. In the D40, it is a larger percentage of the total cost than let's say, a D90.

Most 10-12MP DSLR sensors are in the 2.7-3MP/CM2 range where D40 and D700 are in the 1.4-1.6MP/CM2 range.

The highend P&S today are mostly 1/1.7 size sensors and are in the 33-40MP/CM2 range. They cost about the same as a D40 but the sensors are 1/9 the chip size. The 2/3 sensor size used in prosumers had pretty much disappeared in the past few years.

the main issue is that fabbing a full frame sensor needs 2 or possibly 3 perfectly aligned exposures which adds to the expense. when they have chip fabs that can do a full frame sensor in one pass, the price will drop. i expect within five years, full frame dslrs will be commonplace, with aps sensors at the low end. canon has stated that's their goal but offered no time frame. that's true, for the same sensor technology. that would be true if the sensor technology was the same. the d40 is an older ccd sensor while the d700 is a later generation cmos sensor with a much higher full well capacity and quantum efficiency. plus, the d700 has a 14 bit a/d converter whereas the d40 is limited to 12 bit. the d700 (and the d3 which shares the same sensor) has about two stops more dynamic range than the d40.agreed, it's an excellent camera for the price, but it's not in the same class as a d700 or even a d300, especially at high iso where the difference can be dramatic.

You made excellent points.

I generally agree with what you said but just want to point out a few things.

8 inch wafer may be able to get 16 full size sensors and 36 APS-C size on one wafer. Photo mask may be able to do 1 sensor in each exposure.

14 vs 12 bit A/D converters in a large chip really has very little price difference if any at all. All the DRAM cells has a capacitor either in trench (well) or stacked (bulit up) process. They sell for 1-3 dollar each and have 1 billion cells on them. The laser in a DVD writer use multi-quantum well for lasing. So the design and process technologies to made these wafers are common place.

The real cost different is the 100K run rate of a D700 vs 1M run rate of a D40/D60.

Generally speaking older electronics cost more, not less. Fully depreciated old chips still in production will cost less than when they originally were introduced dueto continued cost reduction efforts.

APS-C and full size sensor have fixed sizes, so cost reduction is just improving production yield. With D40's volume, they will have better opportunity to do that as compared to, let's say, a D3.

P&S is a different story, reduction from the 2/3 size common 5 years ago to 1/1.7, 1/2.3 size today do reduce cost accordingly.

One significant cost factor in sensors is the packaging cost. The substrate used has to match silicon TEC (thermal expansion coefficient). The larger the sensor, the closer substrate TEC must match. I don't know about the newer low cost cameras, older cameras typically use a ceramic package which must be expensive. God forbid in making a package for the full size Hasselblad sensor.