Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Sony TX1 versus Fuji F200EXR

The short answer: even after upsizing the Fuji from its 6mp SN mode to match the TX1's native 10mp, the Fuji kills it dead. Several major areas ...
  1. Fuji edges are cleaner
  2. Fuji detail retention is higher (even after upsizing)
  3. Fuji tones are far better
Number 3 is the one that bothers me most. The Sony loses 3-dimensionality very quickly ... these are at 800ISO, both from the Imaging Resource site.
Here are the crops I took after loading both into ACR5 and adjusting contrast and initial sharpening and luminance NR to smooth the noise. I tweaked sharpness afterwards to pull out as much detail as I could.

I then transferred both to CS4 and adjusted the Sony's sharpening to match the Fuji's ... i.e. same sized halos. This, along with the native 10mp versus upsized should have given the Sony a distinct advantage. But the Fuji kicks its butt.


Remember to click on that image to see the original. If it comes up in your browser a bit small, click on it again to see the full-sized image.

Now ... it is easy to focus on trivialities like the lines in the letter "Pure Brew" on the bottle middle row left ... such things show up at 100%, which is like printing at 36" wide with no ink bleed issues ... rare for a compact. The details on the black fabric are retained a bit better on the Sony as well ... but prints tend to go darker in shadow, so such things get lost.

What does not get lost is the response to colors and the overall 3-dimensionality of the image. This is blindingly obvious, even on web sized images. In my opinion, the F200EXR wipes the floor with the TX1 on these real-life issues. Here are those two images ... processed with my usual flow ...



So ... the TX1 / WX1 sensor is very good for a tiny sensor ... but Fuji still has an edge in the real quality of low light images. This is not a surprise to me ...

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Agreed, the EXR sensor pitch way above their MP's.
It truly irks me to see EXR cameras being reviewed in HR mode.
The mfg's might be getting over the MP Madness but the reiewers, for the most part, are still firmly in its grasp!

Kim Letkeman said...

Well put, Lili.

neos66 said...

Well, imho not quite a fair test.
You should have better tested the WX1 against the 200EXR.
TX1 is a periscope-type camera, with more glass and slow lens.
Think the WX1 with it´s better and faster lens is the real contender for the 200EXR.
But also it will not dethrone the Fuji, at least not in daylight.
Movie-wise it´s a winner.

Btw, nice blog with much work.
Easy to read and overall very good.
Keep it up :)

Kim Letkeman said...

Neos66, thanks for the kind words. The WX1 would appear on paper to have a much better lens than the TX1, yet early examples show better definition on the TX1's lens. The G lens does not seem able to keep up. Of course, when the serious sites review them all, we'll know the score.

drpankajshukla said...

hhi !
You have a great site here !
I dropped in while trying to find info as to WHY is the high iso performance of the F200exr [even in the sn mode ]inferior to the LX3 and the G11 depite the fact that the photosite arrange ment and the binning employed in the F200 places it more favorably for high iso performance than in the other two? any thoughts ? any links ?

Kim Letkeman said...

drpankajshukla: Thanks for the kind words. I don't think that I would agree that the LX3 and G11 are superior to the F200EXR at high ISO. I think you would find that the F200, shot correctly, will retain quite a bit of detail at 1600ISO, at least as much as the g11 and LX3 do in jpeg. In RAW, those two might have an edge, but remember that they cost twice as much and are twice the size. Search my blog for Crombie and look at the latest photo shoot of the little girl getting her hair styled. All images in that post are 1600ISO with a few at 800 ... and the detail is remarkable for such a small sensor.