Originally posted by RMabo Before Pentax released the K20D with CMOS, Pentaxians said CCD trumps CMOS because CCD gives better colours instead of the "washed out watercolours" of the Canon CMOS.
Wasn't involved or invested in Pentax stuff at the time, myself, but in the realm of bridge cameras, where I was comparing a Lumix CCD to Canon CMOS, I found most of the Canon results I saw rather loud and harsh and such. In fact, Lumix was more often accused of being 'watercolorey' at least by people who didn't expose correctly and turn the NR down a bit.
Frankly, I think 'trumps' is just the wrong word, here. There is no 'trumps, not yet or on that basis, anyway. It's about how things are put together, especially, perhaps, for the average out-of-the-box bridge camera user.
My Pentax DSLR is aforementioned CMOS and actually tends to shy, in Jpeg, at least, from rendering anything any too brightly, (even in 'vibrant' mode, you've got to crank saturation to get really bold that way, and that's probably best done in post, anyway.)
With bridge cameras, most of the varying complaints about noise, in the end, seemed to be results of a) poor exposure or b) someone trying to cram in too many MP for the sensor size and firmware of the time, cause there was a 'race'on. I'd say both of these things are less about the kind of sensor, and more about how smart people were about applying them.