Time to test the waters again: Rugged Canon D20 debuts

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posted Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 12:45 AM EST

Canon's PowerShot D20 digital camera. Photo provided by Canon USA Inc. Click to read our Canon D20 preview!A little under three years ago, Canon launched its first waterproof compact digital camera, the PowerShot D10. Today, it gets a replacement, as Canon makes a splash with the waterproof, shockproof, freezeproof PowerShot D20.

The market for rugged, lifestyle cameras has become an increasingly hard-fought one since the D10's debut, and it's been starting to look decidedly long-in-the-tooth. The Canon D20 looks to have made the wait worthwhile,though, with upgrades in pretty-much every area.

There's an aggressively-designed new body, in place of the earlier model's bulbous-but-cute lines. There's a new, more powerful 5x optical zoom lens. There's a brand new image sensor that--while it still has the same twelve megapixel resolution--switches from CCD to CMOS technology. There is, of course, high definition video.

The Canon D20 goes on sale from May 2012, priced at US$350. More in our Canon D20 preview! The press release for this camera--as well as several other simultaneously-announced models--can be found in a separate news item.