Coolpix 5400 terminated in auto accident - recommended replacement?

Am looking for advice on current models with comparable features to the Coolpix 5400 -- mainly macro and movie mode features to determine replacement costs for insurance purposes.

One thing to guard against, though, is to avoid falling into the "more megapixels is better" trap. For picture quality, you can actually end up with too much MP to work with. Let me explain. I came across an interesting article today about how more mega pixels is not necessarily a good thing. According to Image Engineering – a company that does testing of digital cameras for photo magazines in Germany – the quality of digital pictures has steadily decreased since the state of the art was six megapixels back in 2004. And because they don’t have a “dog in this hunt,” they put forth a compelling argument for buying new digital cameras with less mega pixels and not more.

The argument is essentially this: CCD chips on point and shoot cameras a smaller and as such, fitting in more pixels causes them to lose light sensivity. Sure, there’s more data on the chip, but the chip can’t absorb the light data and what it ends up with is a picture that has more noise than image quality. In addition, the more megapixels a camera has, the larger the lens it needs to provide the clarity it deserves and prevent diffraction due to a loss of detail with smaller apertures. But since we’re talking portable point and shoots here, those large lenses simply aren’t being made.

Finally, with larger mega pixels comes longer saving time due to their requires huge storage capacity, or more compression if not storing images in RAW format. The result is a noisier image and a dissatisfied camera user who thirsts for high quality and speed but fell into the trap of "more must mean better."

And if 99.9% of all your pictures are snapshots, then you won't even see any benefit to large MP cameras until you've enlarged your pictures above 8x10. So, it's like driving a Ferrari in the city. Sure, you can do it. But you don't get to enjoy the benefit of all that horsepower.

In the end, relying on a smaller MP that can balance all these needs may indeed be a better answer.

I think one thing that is "controlled" in the Image Engineering experiment is the sensor with the same megapixels. For more advanced sensors, you can actually up the megapixels until you get the same percentage of noise as compared to cameras with a worst sensor. Though, sometimes it is true, upping the megapixels just causes problems, as long as you get a better sensor, plus more megapixels, you'll get the same quality image, with much more detail, and much more editing capability. The test isn't "biased" so to say, but they do only use one type of sensor. When testing with a more advanced CMOS sensor, you can clearly see that upping the megapixels does not cause ridiculous amounts of noise like in the sample images from their tests.

That's a fair counter argument. But unless you have a corresponding increase in chip size to go along with more MP, you're still just stuffing a chip with mp and that will make that chip less sensitive to light, not more.

Then there's playing with the MP count - Setting your camera to a lower setting doesn't help either. Essentially, the image is reduced to the set quality after it has been processed by the CCD. As such, the light still goes through those pixels, only that after some basic processing steps pixels "thrown out" to make the image to the desired setting and size. This process is called "Choking" and that will cause Artifacting and noise. Additionally, you'll also loose details
of the recorded image.

Some cameras have written into their firmware a process called "binning," which merges the signals of multiple pixels to make larger pixels. Usually at a 4-1 ratio. This will essentially turn a 12-megapixel camera into a 3-megapixel camera. And that gives you the opposite problem of too many pixels on the chip ... you now have too few and as such, will run into artifacting instead of noise.

And again, if all you shoot are snapshots or pictures below 8x10, you don't even see the benefit of that much MP, so what's the point?

Thank you for the response with Model makes and numbers. As to the remainder of the discussion on quantity of megapixels, while interesting and informative, it was off point for what I was seeking. I doubt my insurance rep will be much interested in the information. I think other board users may find it interesting and perhaps it would be worthwhile to post it in another area of the site. Model number & make recommendations for a comparative camera to the one lost in the accident was all I was looking for -- thanks.

I'm sure. But if you get a camera that yields poor low light pictures with lots of noise, then what's the point? Are there other choices you can make? What are the preconditions? If we knew if there was a budget or a list of cameras to choose from, it would help us to help you narrow your choices.