Tuesday, April 27, 2010

HS10 Review Part 8 – Saturation and Resolution

Was was wandering along my street again when I noticed this rather brightly colored chair glowing in the bright sunlight. And the lamp in front of it seemed like an interesting target for a shot. I wanted to see if the brick texture would remain unsmeared as well.

HS10

DSCF5241_hs10_chair[1]

F70EXR

DSCF4282_f70_chair[1]

More than any other, this image drove home to me the difference in saturation and color between these two cameras. I think the HS10 simply does a better job. Even though I used “soft” color settings, in ACR and CS4 I was able to get rich color that is really pleasing.

For this specific image, the F70EXR image had nowhere near the same potential. No matter how I cranked vibrance and saturation, the chair never got that rich depth of the HS10 shot.

The brick looks weaker too. So big win for the HS10 there. And no idea why.

I also shot a 720mm image of the lamp, which is dull enough to not bother putting in here. But I took a tiny crop from that image and superimposed it on this images to show you just how much resolution and reach the HS10 has at its disposal …

DSCF5241_hs10_chair_insert[1]

At 270mm, you cannot even see that there is some text there. At 720mm you can read it. Wow. That’s win #2 for the HS10.

But it is not finished. I checked the detail in the paint on the chair … and the F70EXR showed none. No idea why. Maybe I blurred the image ever so slightly, although it is not obvious at 100%.

But the HS10 shows excellent details …

DSCF5241_hs10_chair_texture[1]

And that’s the trifecta. I must admit, I was not pleased to see the F70EXR stomped in this specific set of circumstances. But there is nothing for it. The HS10 is very, very good at this focal length (right in the middle of its range.)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Kim any idea how HS10 manages to get good DR? Some software method is used in the camera or hardware?

Unknown said...

Kim the HS10 date and time is way off :)


Offtopic: Just came across this, if this is indeed true then it can smoke most of the entry level digicam in daylight


http://conversations.nokia.com/2010/04/27/first-12-megapixel-sample-photos-shot-on-nokia-n8-untouched/

Kim Letkeman said...

Archish: Regarding DR, the cam does a decent job, but definitely loses highlights a lot more often than the F70EXR. The HS10 does it in software amd the F70EXR does it in hardware.

Regarding the Nokia phone cam ... very nice. Burns highlights pretty thoroughly and has noticeable grain even at low ISO, but takes pretty great pictures for a phone. Should be a huge hit.