By David Pogue – NY Times – April 7,2011
If you want an easy puzzle, solve a Rubik’s Cube.
If you want something more challenging, balance the national budget.
But if you really want a head-pounder, try making a tiny camera with a big sensor.
The problem is physics. A big sensor records superior light, color and detail. But to flood its surface with light, the lens has to be big and be a certain distance away.
That’s why, for years, there were two kinds of cameras: pocket models, with tiny sensors that produce blurry or grainy photos in low light and S.L.R. cameras, those big-sensor, big-body, heavy black beasts used by professionals.
In the last couple of years, though, things have changed. There’s a new class of camera whose size (both body and sensor) falls in between those two time-honored extremes. They represent a rethinking of every single design element, a jettisoning of every nonessential component, in pursuit of a tiny, big-sensor camera. Because that, after all, is what the world really wants.
Read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/technology/personaltech/07pogue.html?_r=1&ref=technology
