Quentin wrote:
The G7 is great in many respects but I want lower noise and a raw mode, and I want it NOW!
Fine. I'm right there with you. And hopefully you are also willing to take a hit in megapixels to get those things. Fuji seems to be the only mfg with enough smarts to stop at 6 mp. (Of course, given their double photo-site technology, the detail is more like 7 or 8 mp.) The reality is that thumbnail sensors can be divided into 2 or 3 nice clean megapixels or 4 to 6 medium-noise mp or 7+ nasty, yucky mp.
From the mfg's point-of-view failing to up the mp count every generation is a recipe for disaster. You know better; I know better; the engineers who design these things know better. It's Joe Public who buys these things in quantities sufficient to support the industry that makes his buying decision based on more mps = better camera. Or at least, so the mfgs believe.
But it seems to me that Fuji's success at selling 6 mp cameras in the same market that Canon and others are flooding with up to 10 mp cameras gives the lie to the theory that Joe Public only knows from megapixels.