Both the G5 and Pro1 are better cameras for the hardware that drives them. The DIGIC makes the cameras faster than their contemporaries, delivers excellent color rendering and does so more quietly than most digitals -- none of the high-pitched whine that signals a photographer on the prowl.
The DIGIC is an excellent example of how camera manufacturers can improve their products without needlessly increasing sensor size. The price-performance ratio of digital cameras is rapidly approaching its ceiling -- and for Joe Photobug, it may have passed.
We should hope that, rather than push the envelope with bigger image sensors, manufacturers might begin to address shortcomings that have gotten short shrift due to consumers' lust for ever-greater megapixels. Camera makers would do well to start focusing more on the computer hardware driving their device, as Canon has with its DIGIC processor. While this may only indirectly improve image quality, it could mean vast improvements in things like battery life and how quickly your pictures are written to the memory card.
One last word on image size: If your concern in shopping for a new camera is how big you'll be able to enlarge your shots, there is another, far-more cost effective solution: interpolation. Interpolation is an algorithmic method for enlarging an image based on the image's existing digital information by essentially creating new pixels whose colors are based on their nearest neighbors.
Remember the golden rule: You can't create detail you didn't capture.
Such software fixes can be found on the Web, usually for free. Check out http://www.interpolatethis.com. The folks at Fuji even tried passing off their bi-cubic interpolation algorithm as actual pixelage in their 4700Z, which was released as a 4.3-megapixel camera but contained only a 2.4-megapixel sensor. Tisk, tisk, Fuji. It just goes to show; it's not the size of the sensor that matters, but the magic you create with it.
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