Digital Home Thoughts: dpreview.com's Awesome Camera Specifications Tool

It can sometimes be a real pain in the you-know-what to figure out the specs on a new - or old - camera. The problem is that many manufacturers go out of their way to hide certain specs, or make them difficult to find. dpreview.com has a fantastic tool that they've built - it allows you to browse through a huge number of cameras and check out their specs. My favourite feature? How they list the pixel density of the sensor on the camera right up front - that's the dirty number many camera makers don't want you to see as they cram more and more pixels onto what are usually tiny sensors - the higher the pixel density, generally the worse the resulting image will be. I kid you not: the pixel density of the new Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 is 5 MP/cm². The Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZR1? A staggering 43 MP/cm² pixel density. That's a huge difference, and it shows in the photos. At any rate, be sure to check out the dpreview.com tool - it's updated frequently because the Canon 7D is already in there!