Friday, January 18, 2013

F800EXR vs F770EXR – Review Part 2 – Cows (L vs M and JPEG vs RAW)

Stopped on the way home last week and shot a couple of images of cows from a long way off. The massive 500mm reach of these cameras made this easy. They are well stabilized, too. I shot in RAW + JPEG at M size and at L size, so you will see crops at the end showing how much better RAW is than JPEG and how drastically better M size is than L size.

Image 1 – M4:3


F770EXR RAW


F770EXR  100iso  f/5.3  1/120

F800EXR RAW


F800EXR  100iso  f/5.3  1/125

F770EXR JPEG

F800EXR JPEG

Image 2 – L4:3

F770EXR RAW


F770EXR  400iso  f/5.3  1/600

F800EXR RAW


f800exr  400iso  f/5.3  1/550

F770EXR JPEG

F800EXR JPEG

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for … crops.


Conclusion

I strongly favor the RAW images over the JPEG images. There is much more of what I characterize as “dimensionality”, that being the illusion of looking at a 3D object. The clumping and edge destruction in the JPEG images goes a long way to make those images look more like water color paintings.

And the L versus M debate … could there be any more obvious a decision? The issue is compounded by the choice to use DR400 at L size, which forces ISO 400. Since this is a real phenomenon in the field, this is a valid test.

One other thing is obvious, of course … the F770 and F800 shoot images that might as well be twins …