A reminder as to what “in a different class” really means … i.e. will the HS20 compete with the D3100?

I see people writing that they want to see the image quality of the new HS20 to see if it can compete with entry level dSLRs. This begs the question of course on what “compete” means. I.e. on what criteria will you judge?

Well, my criteria is always how the camera handles high ISO, because as the light gets dimmer you need to crank ISO up to maintain shutter speeds. Even outdoors in the evening, you are often shooting at 800 or 1600 in order to keep people looking sharp on the image.

So I always compare cameras at 1600 ISO or thereabouts to see how they fare.

The key to understanding that dSLRs are in a different class of image quality is to understand that there is no substitute for sensor real estate. The bigger the sensor, the better the image quality, all other things being equal. So far, comparisons between the HS10 and HS20 have not shown much improvement. But then, the people shooting the HS10 are always shooting it in HR mode, which is not what you do when you want better low light imagery.

Still, there is only so much improvement available, and the fact is that the APS-C dSLRs retain more detail at 1600 ISO than the HS10 does at 100 ISO in low light. So the classes are so far apart as to eliminate any competition at all.

HS20 ISO Ladder – Will the high ISO be a great leap forward?

Again, from that Polish site, we have some images shot of some sort of carving. Not ideal for an ISO ladder in my opinion, but the noise should come through at least …

At 100 ISO, the cam looks quite clean, as it should.

Here is the ISO ladder:

My Analysis

At 200 ISO, some softening is apparent at 100%, but at web sizes you can’t see that yet. Especially when I process it with PKSharpener.

At 400, we see a little more softening and hints of chroma noise starting to appear. Remember that these are all shot in high resolution mode, which is not the mode in which I would shoot an ISO ladder. But that’s what we have so far. Still, at web sizes, the image remains pretty much the same so far.

At 800 ISO, there is a lot of grain and the chroma noise is unmistakable. However, the chroma noise is also of the kind that is fairly easy to handle in ACR – subtle yellow blotching. The really peculiar thing is that the image has suddenly stopped getting soft and looks sharp again. I wonder if the fellows on the site changed settings or if Fuji has decided to add some sharpening at 800 and above to combat the loss of acuity from grain.

At 1600, the influence of chroma noise in the form of yellow blotching is unmistakable. But when I load it into ACR and use chroma noise reduction with some luminance noise reduction and a bit of sharpening, the result is pretty nice.

At 3200 ISO, things are getting pretty soft and noisy. The blue channel has not gone nuts though, and this is a good thing. The yellow blotching, though, is pretty obvious by now. Even more so for those of you with proper color vision :-)

Again, ACR can help. But we are now in territory where NR destroys so much detail that this is only for emergencies. Memories at a party, that kind of thing.

Now, 6400 ISO is a bit comical on a sensor this size, but the fact is that this is not as bad as one might expect. Very noisy of course, but there is definitely a bit of detail left. These are shot at half resolution by the way. But probably not binned. And ACR NR can again improve on this a bit.

12800 is truly comical, but Fuji allows it so here we are. The image is shot at small size, and it is truly abysmal. No real detail, tons of noise. And for the first time we see specs of blue channel blotching.

I tried ACR and it made a dent, but I was not all that excited with the result so I took a different tack. Here, I use Topaz Denoise 5 on the original. It’s not great, but it’s cleaner. Might be tolerable at web sizes.

This sensor looks pretty good. I suspect that it will match the S100fs once properly tested against that camera. That might make this Fuji’s best bridge camera ever. But of course, we’ll have to wait for someone to really test them against each other.

HS20 – Sample image is very good with high contrast detail

Here is another from that Polish web sit. An excellent image showing a fellow coming off of a ski jump. Very crisp details and not too badly blown out at all. I did load it into ACR to recover the highlights and slightly tweak the shadows, but all in all this is an excellent image.

Let’s look closer at the skier, in fact at 100% crop …

That’s pretty good for sure. There is some fringing, but not much. There are some jaggies, but that is the price of the EXR mosaic. All in all, I’d say that this is a pretty decent result at 100%.

By the way, I processed this crop with the clarify filter from dSLR Tools, Topaz InFocus and Topaz Denoise 5.

Fuji HS20 – Sample Image … same quality as the F550EXR?

Looking at images on one of the many sample sites starting to appear in Poland and Japan, it certainly looks like it is the same quality. I don’t see a whole lot of difference. The sensors and jpeg engines are the same, so there is no reason for the image quality to be any different.

There is one image that caught my eye because it is shot in blazing sunlight and shows hair, which is always a superb test of resolution.

Now, this looks like it was shot in HR mode at DR100 setting, which means that the shadows are too dark and the highlights too bright. The snow is blown out all over the place, especially along the bottom. This is a decent shot, but is certainly not floating my boat that much.

I would process such an image by loading it into ACR, recovering the highlights and opening the shadows. It turns out that the output has enough headroom for that.

This is not a particularly appealing version either, but there is lots of detail in the background and in the shadows so we are getting somewhere.

My final version would be something more like this, where I strike a tonal balance between the original out of camera look and the overly flattened look.

Now, let’s take a peek at the hair to see how well it resolves.

That’s a pair of crops from versions 1 and 2. And you can see that the ear muffs resolve better when the highlights are rescued, but nothing can really save the hair. The details that are there are acceptable when the image is displayed at web sizes or in small prints. But looking closely, the clumping of the hair is rampant, as you would have to expect from pixels less than 2 microns in size.

Oh yeah … and once you spike the saturation a touch you start to see some fringing. Not all that bad, but it is definitely there.

Still, this is not a bad effort. I can’t wait to see this sensor shot well.

A quick peek at the hat shows us that higher contrast details are rendered reasonably well.

All in all, I’d say the camera will make a good outdoor shooter. If only someone would show us the output with my standard settings :-)

F550EXR high ISO … high resolution still a weakness as should be expected …

A new review appeared on a Japanese site and they shot an ISO ladder outdoors. But they shot all images at high resolution which means that the tiny pixels were left to fend for themselves :-)

Pixel peepers will be in agony, so I am not going to bother with crops. The chroma noise is not horrid, but the final results at 3200 ISO are nothing to write home about. Of course, I could have processed it much darker and that might have hidden more of the mess in the sky.

100 ISO

1600 ISO

 

3200 ISO

You will notice that the processing gets heavier and heavier as ISO goes stratospheric … but that’s what it takes to have presentable images when they are shot at high resolution …

OCTranspo not getting it quite right …

Jon came home a moment ago and was furious that he waited from 3:05 to 3:48 to get on a bus home as two 76 buses in a row (3:10 and 3:26) chose to drive by the Campus stop instead of picking up passengers. Lazy or incompetent … who can tell …

All the other buses stopped during that period … just the two 76s chose to give the stop a miss. Very strange coincidence …

He had to walk up to the Laurier stop to catch the next one as this stop is set up so you can wave at the bus to force it to pick you up. Like that should be necessary – sheesh …