Living in the Digital Future

Originally published at BunkBlog. You can comment here or there.

Just over ten years ago, I bought my first digital camera, a Canon S10. As with most of my big purchases, I bought last year’s model with a lot of research beforehand, and I was very pleased with the boxy little thing. Canon has been my go-to camera brand ever since (with the notable exception of our waterproof camera, as the Canon D10 was just too fugly to love). My most recent is an SX20, a break from my older point-and-shoot roots into a bigger camera with a giant zoom lens. As expected, in ten years the camera became much cheaper and much more powerful. This week, Canon announced their new lineup, and for the first time they have a camera with a suggested price of less than $100. So, just because I’ve got time on my hands, let’s compare my $500 camera from 2000 with the latest $90 camera from 2011.

Feature	S10	A800
Resolution	2 Megapixels	10 Megapixels
Zoom	2x	3.3x
Screen	1.8″	2.5″
Video	None	VGA
Weight	11 oz	6 oz (est.)
Battery	Proprietary $40 NiMH	AA
Retail price (when released)	$700	$90

 

Isn’t it great, living in the future?