by Martyn Williams

From...

TOKYO (IDG) -- Fuji Photo Film (FujiFilm) will soon offer a digital still camera with a maximum resolution of 4.32 million pixels, the company has announced.

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The FinePix4700Z will go on sale on March 1 with a recommended retail price of 128,000 yen (US$1,180), the company said in a statement.

It will be the first consumer digital still camera to break the four million pixel barrier. The more pixels the CCD (charge coupled device) optical pickup in the camera has, the higher resolution the images that can be taken.

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Features of the camera, which will store images on SmartMedia cards, include a 3x zoom and video clip function which allows users to record up to 80 seconds of basic video at 320 by 240 pixels resolution at 10 frames per second.

The announcement comes less than a week after Canon announced development of the first three million pixel-class consumer digital still camera -- a product that will go on sale at around the same time FujiFilm plans to begin selling its new camera.