Panasonic ZS3 versus Fuji F70EXR – The Great 2010 Garden Shootout Mark I

Ok … so the title is a little much. In fact it’s quite early in the season, but I must say that there is quite a bit of activity as spring marches along.

I took the ZS3 and the F70EXR outside for a few minutes today and captured what was growing in the front yard.

I started with the bleeding hearts in the front yard near the step. A very pretty early spring bloomer.

F70EXR

ZS3

The processing here was quite different, but this comes from the way in which each image responds.  The Panny image was not all that sharp to start with, but I did a lot of work on it and it looks nice even at 800px (remember to click through.)

Next, I shot the a leaf that had captured a drop of water. A difficult thing to render since water is only defined by the highlights it shows. The F70 successfully captured it and the Panny did not. A bit of blur. It was a bit windy, so perhaps this was simply a statistical thing.

F70EXR

Next, I moved to the fence area, where I have Tulips that come up every year. A nice pure yellow that is nearly impossible to capture in bright sunlight.

F70EXR

ZS3

This time, I preferred the Panny shot a bit darker in the background.

You cannot see it here, but there were bits of crap in these images that CS5’s content aware fill completely wiped out with perfectly believable replacements … I was totally blown away. Kudos to Adobe for saving me tons of time!

I then captured a pretty pair of Tulips with the F70EXR only. I cannot recall why there is no Panny version of this shot.

F70EXR

And finally the Lilac bush in the middle of the front yard. It is finally blooming, so I am able to get some tiny flowers. I like to shoot with angles that show a mix of blooms and leaves in the background, and I must say that the F70EXR slaughtered the ZS3 in this part of the shoot. Despite its longer reach and its better macro facility, the F70EXR is consistently easier to use for this type of shot.

F70EXR

ZS3

So the first serious garden shoot is done, and the F70EXR won that round in my opinion. Nothing wrong with the output of the ZS3 though … if it has features you like (and the video is to die for), then by all means enjoy it.    

HS10 Review Part 18 – Indoor Macro

So how does the HS10 handle crappy light? Light with some contribution from an old incandescent (halogen) bulb and with some contribution from filtered sunlight. Lots of orange and blue fighting it out.

I shot a macro image of the head of my son’s guitar. I was trying to isolate the wires, and I must say that the auto focus (AF) on the HS10 was difficult to use in this light.

I eventually got a couple of comparable images. FIrst, let’s look at the out of camera (OOC) shots. No processing here except a resize and slight sharpen for web (you should *always* do a slight sharpening after you downsize an image):

HS10

F70EXR

 

The astute will notice that the HS10 was shot at 3200 ISO for this comparison. That should be unfair, but in fact that HS10 is quite good at 1600 and 3200. That sensor’s strength is right there.

But, I could not get a sharp shot until I set 3200 ISO. Let’s compare exposures to see why.

This was my fault. I did not notice that the camera had set f/5.6 instead of f/2.8. I am used to shooting in P mode on the F70 and the HS10 was shot in M or A mode most of the time. The F70 generally chooses the right aperture with no input, which is what I like in my small sensor cameras. They are conveniences, and the HS10 is not quite as convenient in many ways. This is one.

Anyway, the difference in these shots is one stop of ISO, and the Sony sensor happens to be pretty good up there so the comparison is still interesting.

The astute will have already noticed that the F70 image blurs the background more than the HS10 … again :-)

Other than that difference, both look ok. Detail is definitely acceptable for two small sensors shot at very high ISO.

What happens when the white balance is adjusted to make the pegs look grey?

HS10

F70EXR

Well, I’ll give the nod to the F70EXR there. I suppose the ISO difference invalidates a strong conclusion, but the F70EXR always seems to handle funky white balance very well. The tiny sensors, even the BiCMOS Sony sensor in the HS10, do not handle it as well.

For sun, I went on to shoot a few more images with the F70EXR, which I find a lot easier to handle in bad light. AF is definitely quicker and more accurate.

F70EXR

 

 

This is the final set of images I have with the HS10. If I get another chance to shoot it, I will play with auto ISO for a while and see whether it is pleasant to shoot with in the same way as the F70EXR. Otherwise, it certainly takes some nice images. Just watch your exposures … this sensor does not have much exposure latitude (i.e. it has poor dynamic range), and for me shooting RAW on such a slow camera is simply not an option.

HS10 Review Part 17 – Macro Depth Of Field - *updated*

I still cannot figure out why the F70EXR gives so much narrower depth of field. The DOF Master online calculator suggests that this should not be. Yet it is …

*Update* User Ralf left a comment about the aperture. I had calculated DOF several times, but decided in this instance to look it over more carefully for both pairs of images. Basically, I think the mystery is solved. If I get a chance to play with the HS10 again, I will focus on retesting this issue. Meanwhile, here is my response to Ralf, with the solution to this mystery.

Ralf: You are probably on to something there. The first pair of images shows that the HS10 was shot at 5.8mm focal length, not its minimum. Which means I was probably at 10 inches or so from the bottles to get focus. And I shot at f/5.6, which I should not have done. DOF Master says that the DOF is about 4.4 inches, more than enough to get two rows in perfect focus. The F70, on the other hand, was shot at f/3.3 and 5mm, which is its minimum focal length. I was probably about 3 or 4 inches from the bottles, which calculates out to 1 inch of DOF. That is enough to blur the second row slightly. With the settings used on the second pair, the DOF field for the HS10 doubles to 1.22 inches from 0.63 inches. This is probably enough to make the differences we see in the image. I'll add this to the article. Thanks.

HS10

F70EXR

That is *not* a small difference. Still scratching my head … 

It’s visible in the following crops too …

HS10

F70EXR

Beats the heck out of me why there is always more blur in backgrounds with the HS10. The detail rendering at this magnification is essentially identical.

*Update* Not any more. Thanks Ralf.

HS10 Review Part 16 – At Middle Distance

This camera lends itself to sitting around and shooting everything nearby. Subjects at 20 or 30 feet are well within the reach of this lens. So here are some images shot at approximately 30 feet. Let’s see how well it retains detail. I will also compare it with the F70EXR in a few cases.

First, a shot across my pool of some sort of weird pool toy made of colored foam. The back lighting allow there to be a fair bit of shadow behind it, which will make for interesting crops.

Note the sun blasting off the stained concrete. The image is well balanced for light, so the compensation I was shooting with, –0.67EV, was able to hold the bright spots very well.

HS10

If you click through, you can see that the details are pretty well rendered in there. The branches on the right hand crop who a little texture and the foam is very crisp.

F70EXR

I get the sense of a tad more detail in the crops here, but is is not enough to get excited over. At web sizes, the images look very similar. Of course, I could have zoomed all the way to 720mm for a closer look, but this composition called for 270mm. Not every shot demands the telescope.

I turned to those Hydrangea blooms from last year. Backlit, which poises a bit of a challenge for a sensor and jpeg engine that sometimes take hold of an image and mush it up, so to speak. This one is shot at the full zoom and I quite like this rendering.

These crops show good detail at 100% and very nice bokeh.

The following series perfectly illustrates two things: (1) That the HS10 sensor has got significantly less dynamic range to handle highlights. And (2) that the extra resolution of the HS10 makes a difference when cropping.

HS10 – watch for the burnt out concrete.

 

F70EXR – note that the detail in the crop is upsized to match the HS10, and remains harder to read.

And, of course, if you really want to read the label, just zoom in to the max with the HS10. It still cannot hold the highlights on the concrete, but that’s not the point of this particular shot.

Can’t argue with that :-)

The final series in this middle distance set of shots is a zoomed out shot of the back yard. It is early spring, so there is little in the way of foliage. My neighbor’s large Blue Spruce dominates the landscape.

HS10

F70EXR

Again, we see a slight difference in the background sections. The HS10 comes off a bit mushy when looking at the crops. But for general purpose use, this level of mush does not cause much difficult. On the other hand, were you trying to crop some detail in the darker sections, the EXR sensor would be a bit crisper than the HS10 as it has been throughout these tests.   

HS10 Review Part 15 – Depth of Field

I’ve alluded so a strange phenomenon in other parts of this review where the F70EXR seems to have a narrower depth of field than the HS10 at equivalent magnifications.

This might make intuitive sense based solely on the slightly larger sensor, with the F70EXR sporting a 1/2” sensor and the HS10 sporting a 1/2.3” sensor.

The following example once again shows the phenomenon and I cannot explain it away using slightly different subject distance, which really matters in close with macro shots. I cannot explain it with different magnifications, since the two cameras were shot at equivalent focal lengths … about 270mm effective.

The DOFMaster.com site even says that the F70EXR should have approximately 1.4 feet of focus depth on the following shot, which I think you will agree is more than enough to keep everything in focus as the HS10 does.

Here is what DOF Master has to say:

And here are the two shots.

HS10

F70EXR

I just cannot fathon why the F70EXR can generate a bit of background blur under more circumstances than the HS10. The HS10 retains the obvious advantage of the massive focal length, but for more typical subject distances, the F70EXR always gets a slightly better subject isolation, and that can really matter.

Something to chew on …

HS10 Review Part 14 - Textures

Well, textures might be a bit strong for these images. What I am looking for here is how the HS10 renders texture against the F70EXR. In the following two images, I shot the HS10 at 100ISO as I did all day.

But I shot the F70EXR on auto, as I always do and it chose 1600ISO. This puts it at a 4 stop disadvantage. You would think it would get absolutely crushed. And yet, I don’t think it does. You be the judge.

HS10

F70EXR

What is most noticeable as a difference here is the fact that the fence in behind the tree at the bottom left corner is visible in the HS10 shot and is not in the F70EXR shot. This is exactly the opposite of the expected result between these two cameras, and almost certainly comes down to the 4 stop ISO difference.

So let that be a reinforced lesson … keep ISO low to preserve as much dynamic range as you can. Fuji’s software dynamic range implementation is simply silly, since it pushes ISO upwards. Better to do that job yourself in your post processing editor. But their EXR binning technology is another story entirely. At reasonably low ISOs, it preserves amazing tonal detail.

Anyway, back to our comparison. I turned to face west and shot this little apple tree in my neighbor’s yard. I love the texture of the wood with the sub glancing off of it … and I love the texture and detail of freshly minted leaves. I use crops to show how each camera handles this.

HS10

F70EXR

As we have seen so far, there is very little to choose between these cameras. The two render the texture of the wood with perfect 3-dimensionality and the leaves look lush and detailed.

I still get the feeling that there is a bit of an advantage in dynamic range to the F70EXR, but there should be. And given that there is hardware at play, the HS10 does not get beat as handily as one would expect. But do bear in mind that these cameras are shot here at –0.67EV compensation to control highlights. This makes a difference.