Tuesday, September 1, 2009

F70EXR -- Mixed Bag of Samples and Tests

After yesterday's crushing realization that Fuji have ignored their inadequate microphone for 4 years, I have rallied to consider the fact that the camera's reach and rather nice high ISO makes it an astoundingly good still image concert camera. So I turned my attention to testing the lense at the extremes ... how sharp is this thing?

I started with a couple of shots at the workstation ... one of the blinds and one of the USB switcher I use (if you have not tried one of the better ones, you are in for a treat.)

I shot the blinds at 270mm from about 10-12 feet away ... I was careful to align the plane of focus to avoid a false blur at the corners from a tilt.


That's not too bad, although 3200iso does have a softening affect. Remember that I load everything through ACR, so I apply a bit of sharpening and sometimes I apply some NR. Not for this one though, this was Neat Image.

The next image is at 1600 ISO and also had Neat Image applied to it, although it probably did not need it at web size.


The cam is pretty sharp, even at what should be considered very high ISO for a 1/2" sensor. I then had to go and feed the young one ... so I fired up the barbie and grabbed an old tripod to shoot some images in the yard.

I shot across the pool to the garden, where I have a Purple Ninebark under seige by some sort of weed vine that has plagued by yard for years now. It self seeds so I have it every year. Anyway, I shot that bush from about 20-25 feet from tripod with stabilization on.

This is 100iso at sunset.


And then I put in the center and corner crops to illustrate the sharpness of the lens ... I find it perfectly adequate for my needs.


So, of course, I turned my attention to the moon. What better test than shooting something 256000 miles away?


Remember to click on the images to see the 800 pixel versions. Not the best moon shot I have, but definitely not the worst either.

While cooking the Souvlaki Pork Kabobs I puttered about the garden and came away with a few shots that were interesting, in that ther are shot at high ISO after sunset and processed *without* noise reduction ....



This next one was shot in pro low light mode ... and it worked very well. Grain free at 1600iso ...


So the cam continues to impress ... mostly. High ISO on this thing is way beyond where it should be with the sensor size. Very, very smooth ...

3 comments:

Unknown said...

That is most impressive! The ISO 1600 was not the pro low light mode but rather a straight shot?
If so that is really quite good, well above my old F31FD, IMHO.
I have been dithering over the F200exr, G10/11 and the F70exr. Your tests are very much loading the dice towards that last!
Do you think the S200exr has a chance to show as much improvement?

Kim Letkeman said...

Yes, the thistle and the pool were both shot at 1600ISO in SN mode. I.e. simple, single exposure 5mp images.

One thing I will note, though, is that all three shots at the end were slightly overexposed and required recovery in ACR. So they shots would not have looked as good straight from the camera. I will update the blog to mention that for fairness.

Kim Letkeman said...

Oh yeah, you asked about the S200EXR. It should be the same as or better than this cam because of the larger version of the same sensor. Of course, it also sports 2mp extra, so the advantage is about 25% less pixel density. But that probably translates into something like 1/3 stops ... i.e. it might not be noticeable day to day ... I'm not quite sure ...