HS10 Review Part 7 – Wide Angle Field of View and Long Distance Details

After shooting the wheels and mutt, I walked back to my yard and decided to shoot down the street. It was a lovely morning with the sun over my left shoulder, and that gave a nice glow to the greenery and some depth to the sky.

HS10

F70EXR

Now, you might be wondering how the field of view compares between the 24mm of the HS10 and the 27mm of the F70EXR. Well, I should have shot these from tripod to get a perfect comparison, but I did not. Still, the magic of the free transform in CS4 allowed me to create a decent overlap to show you.

To get the real difference, you must mentally subtract the right hand difference from the left hand difference. Not all that much left, is there? For someone bent on getting the HS10 just for the 24mm, I’d consider the rest of the package against the massive size advantage of the F70EXR / F80EXR.

The next series is a group of isolation shots at maximum zoom of the fire hydrant in the distance.

What … you can’t see the fire hydrant? Well, it’s obvious … right there! :-)

The HS10 at full zoom should make short work of that …

I don’t think I’ll be writing home about that wonderful detail or the micro contrast (seems rather blurred in fact, with a glow around everything) … but you can read a few letters on the hydrant and that’s pretty incredible from where I was standing.

So how does the F70EXR do at full zoom?

 

 

I think many people are buying the HS10 just for the shock value of its telescope … so this certainly won’t rock their boats much. And yet it is very nice looking … clean details, good contrast … a nice image.

What if we try to crop the F70EXR image to match the field of view (FOV) of the HS10 image? Considering the F70EXR gives up a 50% resolution advantage and about 60% zoom advantage, It’s gonna get smoked, right?

Wrong. That’s not as detailed on the hydrant as the HS10 image, but some of the details actually look better to my eyes. All in all, it’s definitely playing in the same league.

This brings to mind all those who question whether a dSLR with a consumer lens like, say, the 70-300VR (a pretty cheap combo these days) can compete against the massive zoom of the HS10. Well, if the F70EXR with all its disadvantages can compete (and I consider this competing), then a dSLR is going to lay a decent beating on the HS10. But I already proved that.

So there you have it … both cams do decent wide angle and both cams have decent reach. The HS10 can perform some amazing feats of magnification with that lens, but the F70EXR is sharp enough at full zoom to make cropping an option. So don’t make your buying decisions solely on field of view. There are many factors …