Edit: Oops ... this should have been round 6. But just consider it an extension of round 5 ... Mark II if you will ... now renamed round 5B.
Fuji Talk Forum member Buckshot asked me to shoot some snow images with custom white balance. I thought that was a great idea, so here is a super-truncated comparison. I stood at my bedroom window and shot straight down at the pool deck ... this is excellent as a test since the snow has texture and the shadow is quite deep (duh ... midday sun.)
The bushes are in shadow and we can see how they hold shadows and detail at the same time.
And the blue channel issue of the ZS3 makes itself clearly obvious ... the Fuji shows us fairly neutral shadows, while the Panny shows up prominently blue shadows. So when light gets low, the Panny turns blue. This is bad news for red items as you saw in the high ISO ladder ... nasty purples where there should be reds.
Panny
Fuji
Here we can also see the high dynamic range mode of the Fuji asserting itself with more authority. The shadows are more open and the highlights are smoother and better protected. This is why we buy EXR sensors.
I also find the Panny a little too sharpened straight from the camera, which you can see in the downsized crops. The Panny should actually be too soft, since I did not add sharpening to compensate for the downsizing interpolation. Yet we see it retaining high sharpness, indicating that it was *really* sharp out of camera.
All in all, the Fuji easily wins this round. But the Panny does not stink ... it just doesn't handle custom WB as well ... and its tone curve is a little stronger than the Fuji's, making it more difficult to process later on ...
7 comments:
Wow...it just LOOKS like Winnipeg in the winter and yet...we have no snow! Bwaaah, ha ha ha ha ha!
Kim,
I'm a Canadian expat in Taiwan. I'm currently in the market for a camera, and I've had two above-average camera enthusiasts both narrow down my list of parameters to either the Fuji F70EXR and the Panasonic ZS3. Then I stumble across your blog (via dpreview). That's three people now who think both of these cameras are a good deal.
The problem is I still have some questions that are best answered by someone who has worked with both of them--and I'm a bit of a newbie. I wanted to register on dpreview, but I'm using a Hotmail email account (expat, remember), and they don't allow Hotmail email addresses.
Firstly: Is there any way that you know of to get me registered on dpreview so that I can ask my questions? Barring that, do you have any alternatives for ways for me to ask my questions? (I'd appreciate it greatly if it were a place that you frequent as I like your approach to evaluation.) Thirdly: How long do you anticipate this evaluation to go on?
Thanks,
SlowRain
CFM: Let's revisit the issue in a few weeks :-)
Slowrain: I suggest that you consider getting your own domain at something like ipower.com. For 5 bucks a year or so, you can get a domain and a few email addresses. That lets you register wherever you like. I use ipower and like them very much. This evaluation will continue for a little while longer ... I have not done much formal testing of high ISO with flash ... that's a very realistic scenario and deserves to be tested. Other than that, I am keeping both ... if I could only keep one, then it would probably be the Fuji because of the high ISO. However, I must say that the video on the ZS3 has me delighted and amazed.
Thanks for the suggestions. I was leaning towards the Fuji anyway because of the price. At this point, video is very low on my list of priorities, so it seems to be a fair trade off in my situation.
A couple more quick questions, and then I'll be done:
How would you rate Fuji's quality and reliability?
My wife and I will both be using this camera. I don't mind playing around with a few buttons and experimenting, but she just wants something that she can turn on, point, and click. How is the complete auto setting?
What internet resources would you recommend to a relative new person who is interested in playing with a camera like the Fuji? Something that will teach about the mechanics of digital cameras (ie. ISO, advantages/disadvantages of different settings in different situations), scene composition, photo editing, etc.
Thanks,
SlowRain
Sorry, one more thing. Regardless of what camera I get, what are some quick tests I should perform and pictures I should take just to make sure I didn't get a dud. (I'm thinking particularly about that thread on DPReview where the guy who did the review for some website later mentioned that the second Fuji he played with didn't have the lens issues that he wrote about in his initial review.)
Thanks,
SlowRain
Slowrain: The Fuji seems fine from a build standpoint. I have never felt it was cheap. Reliability seems fine. But these things are subject to sample variation. The auto settings are ok, but I would not recommend them. Instead, set the camera up as documented in my blog entry "how to shoot mark II" ... search the blog for that. I would recommend a book for you to get started on ... John Shaw's Field Guide to Nature Photography. There are some basic web sites with tutorials as well, DPReview has some good tutorials and so does Luminous Landscape. More advanced stuff can be found in the links at the top of my blog.
Regarding an initial test ... I don;t know if that makes much of a difference. If you are not a pixel peeper, I don;t think you will find any issues with the lens. The people who get all twisted about the 27mm corner image quality are often making mountains of mole hills in my opinion.
Thank you very much for your help. I appreciate it.
SlowRain
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