Compact cameras have quickly acquired higher resolution sensors and such useful technology as image stabilisation. Zoom lenses have gone wider and longer and automatic exposure, focussing and image processing have all improved so that today’s cameras are superior to those of three years ago. It is hard to resist the siren call of the latest model.

Photographic distributor, Robert Heim, says that there was a formula used in the digital camera business in its early days: “For every $100 spent on a new camera it will be kept for one month.” This was a period when a 2 megapixel camera like the original Nikon Coolpix cost $2000. Mr Heim says that now that 5, 6 and 8 megapixel sensors are commonplace in cheap cameras the turnover rate has slowed to one new camera every couple of years.

Gfk Consumerscope track the camera business and they reported in January that 39 per cent of buyers were purchasing a second or third camera. Stuart Poignand, marketing manager at Canon Australia, says that more than 50 per cent of Canon buyers are buying a second or subsequent camera.

The economics of photography have been transformed by digital. With film cameras the improvements were in film emulsions, chemicals and papers so there was little to be gained in swapping one $299 camera for another. The big costs were in film and processing, $23 for every 24 exposure film, developing and printing. In digital the pictures cost nothing if they are shared electronically, as most are, so buying a replacement digital camera is not as indulgently expensive as it might look.

Canon have made the unilateral decision that the megapixel wars are over. Canon’s new Ixus 800is is a 6mp camera, which has surprised observers, but the company reckons that 6 million clean pixels with image stabilised lens and exemplary in-camera processing is what people really need. Will consumers buy this reasoning when a 6mp Canon costs $100 more than an 8mp Sony? After all, bigger is better, right?

Compact camera technology is now mature. With many brands taking their sensors from the same source company it is hard to get a resolution advantage. Gimmicks, such as wireless connectivity and touch screens, will only seduce a few gadget freaks and the big battle now is over price and retail margins. Makers are skimping on materials and features -- more plastic, less metal and no optical viewfinder -- and moving manfuacturing to China to shave a dollar off the price. Some of this years cameras are inferior in quality to the models they replace but they have more pixels and cost less.

The only way to stay ahead of the game is never to buy a camera.

*