i have read a few things about the difference between the two, BUT a lot of what i read, i have no idea how it affects me, so i was thinking of just asking here, from real camera people thinking the same as me, whats the real world difference between the two? is there one better some some shooters vs the other? is one faster? is one BETTER??

school me........and maybe some others who know as little as me.....

For a dslr, the cmos will be much better for high iso shooting over a cdd sensor. CDD for a dslr max out around 1600iso, any higher and it gets noise. pns pretty much everything is cdd, and depending on the size of the sensor. 800 or 1600iso are their max. Sony did come out with a cmos for pns camera. But it really did not increase iso performance with the tiny sensors.

There are many other things that differentiate cameras besides the type of sensor they use. Real-world criteria will narrow your selection a lot sooner than theoretical differences.

CMOS is noted for lower power consumption, which helps with battery life - a consideration, and the lower power means less heat, which translates into less noise, which is why there has been more development of CMOS, but there is not any real world difference in image quality, and I wouldn't choose a camera just based on the type of sensor.

brian

the reason i ask is......the 4 cameras im looking into 2 have cmos 2 have ccd.....all 4 are roughly close in specs....so im trying to narrow things down

If the camera's you are looking at are dslr's go with cmos, if it is a point and shoot it really does not matter much.

yeah they are all 4 point and shoots.........
(finepix hs10/hs11, Panasonic dmc-fz100, coolpix p100, and canon sx30 is)