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SD500 really that bad at f:2,8?

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Daniel Keutmann

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I want to buy a new compact camera, since my last one (s230) was stolen.

I read the review of the new sd500 and was quite excited about it. Today I went to a shop and played with it for a while - and liked it even better than Sonys W7.

I can live with slight corner softness and with the purple fringing (the s230 had this, too).

What I could not live with is flat pictures wide open (f:2,8), since there are only a few apertures available and especially in dim light the camera would usually use a wide aperture, even more so because I love the smoothness of ISO 50 shots.

Now on the one hand I have seen the comparison posted somewhere here in the forum between the p200 the s400 the Sd500 and the small canon fix focal lenght camera (can´t remember the name).

http://www.pbase.com/ausb/sd500_comp

In this comparison at f:2,8 the sd500 really was significantly worse than the rest (with the P200 being the best in my opinion).

To me it also seemed that this test was very well done.

On the other hand the test contained (with the exception of the first pic) only crops, so it would be possible that the SD500 simply focused somewhere else (or the sd 500 used was simply a bad unit). I somehow can´t believe that the sd 500 can be SO FAR off (bricks at the house wall).

Moreover, every professional review (Steves, dc-resource and here) praised the image quality, and although in the review here Phil speaks of softness, it has been related to low contrast areas rather than to wide open aperture.

Unfortunately most of the sample pictures on this site are at aperture f:7.1 and the ones that are not are somehow not very good to judge sharpness (baloon pic).

This is why I can´t decide wether to buy the sd500 or a sony W7.

Since deep in my heart I am a Canon guy I would like to kindly ask sd500 owners to post some kick ass crisp shots taken at f:2,8 in order to dispel my doubts. (even better would be comparison shots at that aperture between sd 500 and the p200 of course...)

Cheers, Daniel
 
Aussie blocke mentions those pics over and over again as proof that the SD500 is a poor camera in real life shooting conditions. I hardly think two pictures (from a camera that may be defective) provide sufficient evidence to say the SD500 produces the worst pictures compared to the other cameras tested. He also says other sample pics provide similar results, but I"m not sure which ones he is referring to.
 
PS Work: Cropped, levels, contrast, noise ninja:
http://www.pbase.com/ctfchallenge/image/41814960
http://www.pbase.com/ctfchallenge/image/41461384

Sorry thats all I have at F2.8...
Daniel Keutmann said:
I want to buy a new compact camera, since my last one (s230) was
stolen.

I read the review of the new sd500 and was quite excited about it.
Today I went to a shop and played with it for a while - and liked
it even better than Sonys W7.

I can live with slight corner softness and with the purple fringing
(the s230 had this, too).

What I could not live with is flat pictures wide open (f:2,8),
since there are only a few apertures available and especially in
dim light the camera would usually use a wide aperture, even more
so because I love the smoothness of ISO 50 shots.

Now on the one hand I have seen the comparison posted somewhere
here in the forum between the p200 the s400 the Sd500 and the small
canon fix focal lenght camera (can´t remember the name).

http://www.pbase.com/ausb/sd500_comp

In this comparison at f:2,8 the sd500 really was significantly
worse than the rest (with the P200 being the best in my opinion).

To me it also seemed that this test was very well done.

On the other hand the test contained (with the exception of the
first pic) only crops, so it would be possible that the SD500
simply focused somewhere else (or the sd 500 used was simply a bad
unit). I somehow can´t believe that the sd 500 can be SO FAR off
(bricks at the house wall).

Moreover, every professional review (Steves, dc-resource and here)
praised the image quality, and although in the review here Phil
speaks of softness, it has been related to low contrast areas
rather than to wide open aperture.

Unfortunately most of the sample pictures on this site are at
aperture f:7.1 and the ones that are not are somehow not very good
to judge sharpness (baloon pic).

This is why I can´t decide wether to buy the sd500 or a sony W7.

Since deep in my heart I am a Canon guy I would like to kindly ask
sd500 owners to post some kick ass crisp shots taken at f:2,8 in
order to dispel my doubts. (even better would be comparison shots
at that aperture between sd 500 and the p200 of course...)

Cheers, Daniel
Click to expand...
 
Thank you PhotoNUT, your pictures are stunning indeed, and not only from a technical-sharpness point of view!!!

But both are macro shots, maybe you or someone else could post some real life pictures taken at dim light at f:2.8 of low contrast object?

Cheers again, Daniel
PhotoNUT said:
Sorry thats all I have at F2.8...
Daniel Keutmann said:
I want to buy a new compact camera, since my last one (s230) was
stolen.

I read the review of the new sd500 and was quite excited about it.
Today I went to a shop and played with it for a while - and liked
it even better than Sonys W7.

I can live with slight corner softness and with the purple fringing
(the s230 had this, too).

What I could not live with is flat pictures wide open (f:2,8),
since there are only a few apertures available and especially in
dim light the camera would usually use a wide aperture, even more
so because I love the smoothness of ISO 50 shots.

Now on the one hand I have seen the comparison posted somewhere
here in the forum between the p200 the s400 the Sd500 and the small
canon fix focal lenght camera (can´t remember the name).

http://www.pbase.com/ausb/sd500_comp

In this comparison at f:2,8 the sd500 really was significantly
worse than the rest (with the P200 being the best in my opinion).

To me it also seemed that this test was very well done.

On the other hand the test contained (with the exception of the
first pic) only crops, so it would be possible that the SD500
simply focused somewhere else (or the sd 500 used was simply a bad
unit). I somehow can´t believe that the sd 500 can be SO FAR off
(bricks at the house wall).

Moreover, every professional review (Steves, dc-resource and here)
praised the image quality, and although in the review here Phil
speaks of softness, it has been related to low contrast areas
rather than to wide open aperture.

Unfortunately most of the sample pictures on this site are at
aperture f:7.1 and the ones that are not are somehow not very good
to judge sharpness (baloon pic).

This is why I can´t decide wether to buy the sd500 or a sony W7.

Since deep in my heart I am a Canon guy I would like to kindly ask
sd500 owners to post some kick ass crisp shots taken at f:2,8 in
order to dispel my doubts. (even better would be comparison shots
at that aperture between sd 500 and the p200 of course...)

Cheers, Daniel
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Just looked at the comparison shots again.

It strikes me odd that in the last shot (the one with zoom) the sd500 clearly outperforms the p200, although both cameras are wide open (sd500 f:4.9 / p22 f:5.2).

So it seems the problem (if there is one at all) only occurs when shooting wide open at the wide end of the zoom.

How can there be such a big difference between wide open at the different focal lengths??
 
Sorry if I keep bashing the same point with those pics, but I guess I keep posting them in the hope that someone will post some other pics to prove otherwise. I agree it could just be a faulty camera, but if so I'd love someone to show me some pics that indicate this. So far I haven't seen anything to show this. Lots of people only come to this forum every few weeks or so, so it is quite possible that most people have never seen those pics. But yes it's probably tiresome for those of you who have seen them a hundred times.

"dbuhanan" had a good example of 2 shots at F2.8 with both the S500 and SD500, but I just looked now and noticed he removed the SD500 shot at F2.8 and instead has a more close-up shot at F3.5. ??? Why did you remove that shot dbuhanan? Before there was a great comparison of 2 IDENTICAL shots at F2.8, and now we have 2 different shots and also at different apertures. The comparison is meaningless now. The other shot really showed the weakness at F2.8. ??? Oh well...

Like I said, I too am waiting for someone to post some IDENTICAL indoor shots at F2.8. But until that happens, I can only assume the SD500 is not so hot at F2.8...
 
Hi Aussie Bloke,

as I said in my original post I think you did a really good comparison. But the more I look at your test pics (especially the first one) the surer I become that the flatness is due to a focus issue. Between The SD 500 and the other cameras are WORLDS (compare the upper end of the bottle on the right), and even if the SD 500 is really worse than the competition, in hardly should be by such a big difference.

This conjecture is also confirmed by the pictures posted by photoNUT and cegiris, although unfortunately they lack a comparison to another camera.

If you still have your SD 500 could you maybe reshoot your comparison shots and try to see if you can manage to improve the results of the sd500 (and indicate focus point)?

I did a similar test myself some months ago, comparing the Digital Rebel Kit lens with the Tamron f:2.8 28-75 and the corresponding Sigma f:2,8 standard zoom lens.

For hours of shooting the kit lens turned out to be the best, a result that coulnd´t be possible according to what was said in the forum about these lenses. In the end I found out it was a focus issue, although of course I used a tripod, center focus and concentrated really on the focussing point.

Maybe if your reshoot turns out differently you could dispel the doubts of many people (including myself) who wanted to buy a SD500 but were discouraged by your review.

Cheers, Daniel
 
I will try and do another test sometime, although I won't have time this weekend.

Note however that I turned off AiAf on all cameras and used centre focussing. I pointed the centre focussing point directly at the "Bertolli" bottle for all shots. I also took 2 of each shot with each camera to allow for abnormailities.

Also the "softness" is present is most of my SD500 shots so it wasn't just a one-off test.

I also saw the same thing in another post, although as I mentioned for some reason he has removed that picture now. Perhaps he got sick of me referring people to his link... :)

And also the review on this site says in the conclusion that detail such as foliage and hair looks soft.

I think we just have to wait for more people to do some tests and post. I'm just one user, and who knows I may have a faulty camera, although I doubt it, so you should take my ramblings in perspective. We need input from several users to make a good judgement. Hopefully we will see some more test pics soon.
 
Sorry for going back to how your shots were made, but it also seems to me a huge difference between the sd500 and all the other cameras you tested. A big difference even between sd20 and the sd500...

I understood you disabled AiAf and used center focussing. But are you 100% sure that the camera could focus on the Bertolli bottle? did you get the green rectangle before shooting?

It would be nice if you could make a couple of more shoots/tests at f2.8 and maybe get other people that have the camer post more photos in low light conditions.

Rgds,
Eugen
 
I found that review, too - just a few hours ago. I must say I have hardly ever seen such a bad yet long review of a camera.

The weighting is ridiculous, and the results are so different to these here on dpreview, I just think of the resolution test, that I somehow can´t take it seriously...
jagge said:
jagge said:
Moreover, every professional review (Steves, dc-resource and here)
praised the image quality, and although in the review here Phil
speaks of softness, it has been related to low contrast areas
rather than to wide open aperture.
Click to expand...
You can look here as well

http://www.digitalcamerainfo.com/content/Canon-PowerShot-SD500-Digital-Camera-Review-.htm

They also talk about some weak points of the camera
Click to expand...
 
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