SFJP
Senior Member
It seems the crop of new 5 mp digicams is far from receiving an unanimous acclamation from its first users according to the posts in the various forums of dpreview. The Minolta D7, the Sony 707 and now the Olympus E20 seem to be far from meeting the expectations of many of the people who bought them. And it seems also the new Nikon 5000 gives some trouble to Nikon who is chasing the sites displaying preview samples taken with this camera to remove these samples.
What's wrong? Beyond some drawbacks specific to each model of camera body, such as D7 autofocus bad performances for instance, the CCD itself (for now all these cameras share the same 5 mp CCD produced by Sony) seems to be the main source of troubles: the D7 and E20 are said to have an excessive noise even at their lower ISO 100 or 80 setting, the 707 has artificial "electric colors" and quite visible artifacts but much less noise. What's in common in these troubles? in my view, I'd bet it is excessive noise from in the initial pictures coming from the CCD! Yes, the Sony 707 has much less noise than the two others, but only because it applies a strong in-camera processing to remove it after the image is taken, and this might well be the reason of the artifificial look of the pictures it produces (artificial lines emphasizing border between surfaces, artificial looking textures and diificulty to equilibrate colors).
This kind of problem encountered by the new 5 mp consumer level CCD was predicted more than one year ago by Fuji. Fuji argued that 2.5/3.3 mp was the maximum that can be reached from consumer level CCD that have for now a very small surface. To go beyond would be paid by an excessive amount of noise. And what happens today with the dissatisfaction encountered by the new 5 mp consumer/prosumer camera could just prove Fuji was right (while Sony 4 mp CCD seems to raise a little less criticism, but it is right that 4 mp CCD was expected to be just a transition and did not raise as much expectations as did the 5 mp CCD that was presented as the future stable standard for CCD resoution).
And if Fuji's prediction was right, for consumer level CCD with a small surface, the superCCD approach promoted by Fuji can well be the only one reasonable for a while, until CCD with larger area can be produced at reasonable price (to fit with the less than 1,000$ category).
The Fuji 3.3 mp superCCD that can be found in the Finepix 6800 and 6900, produces natively 6 mp pictures that have a resolution on par with Sony 5 mp CCD pictures (or at least very close), but Fuji pictures are rather noise free at ISO 100 and with a very acceptable level of noise (easily removed on computer, see http://www.pbase.com/sfjp/neat_image_noise_removal_tests ) at ISO 200 (ISO 400 not so good, though). And the Fuji colors are just perfect in daylight outdoor pictures. The main defect of the pictures produced by these Fuji cameras comes from the in-camera sharpening that creates visible artifacts at full 6 mp resolution: easy to bypass by using the "soft" sharpening setting instead of the "normal" one. A secondary defect is due to some difficulty to masterize the right WB setting for indoor shots, while with some effort it is possible to find the good solution in most cases (this might rather be a defect of the current Fuji WB algorithm than of the superCCD itself). For shots in dark night, the superCCD exhibits also a significant number of hot pixels for exposures > 1sec., which makes it not very adapted to this kind of use, although hot pixels can now be easily removed by post-processing (or in-camera processing with the ad hoc algorithm not available yet on Fuji cameras).
I think that most comparisons between top mega pixels cameras that conclude to the triumph of the Sony 5mp CCD over the Fuji 3.3 mp superCCD just got it wrong in practice. The 3.3 mp superCCD remains in my opinion the best solution available today for small surface CCD found in the consumer/prosumer price level and might remain for long if the ratio price/surface of CCD does not fall significantly in a short future.
So what? I believe that the Fuji 6800 and 6900 are incredibly underevaluated by the expert reviewers while they provide, except for night shots maybe, the best picture quality available today and may be for a while in the less than 4,000$ camera category (while the 6800 and 6900 are now sold around 500$ in the US!!). The 6800 and 6900 cameras themselves are not perfect and should be enhanced in the short future, with a lens that would remain without distortion in the corners, better night shot ability, a less brutal in-camera sharpening algorithm, a better autofocus and, please mr. Fuji, a better EVF on the 6900 successor. But I would be very sad if for marketing reasons and to comply with the criticismes of the expert reviewers Fuji would drop its superCCD, to follow the majority and use instead the Sony noisy 5 mp CCD, except if Fuji would introduce instead a large surface CCD of its own (or from Philips?).
Jean-Paul
http://www.pbase.com/sfjp
What's wrong? Beyond some drawbacks specific to each model of camera body, such as D7 autofocus bad performances for instance, the CCD itself (for now all these cameras share the same 5 mp CCD produced by Sony) seems to be the main source of troubles: the D7 and E20 are said to have an excessive noise even at their lower ISO 100 or 80 setting, the 707 has artificial "electric colors" and quite visible artifacts but much less noise. What's in common in these troubles? in my view, I'd bet it is excessive noise from in the initial pictures coming from the CCD! Yes, the Sony 707 has much less noise than the two others, but only because it applies a strong in-camera processing to remove it after the image is taken, and this might well be the reason of the artifificial look of the pictures it produces (artificial lines emphasizing border between surfaces, artificial looking textures and diificulty to equilibrate colors).
This kind of problem encountered by the new 5 mp consumer level CCD was predicted more than one year ago by Fuji. Fuji argued that 2.5/3.3 mp was the maximum that can be reached from consumer level CCD that have for now a very small surface. To go beyond would be paid by an excessive amount of noise. And what happens today with the dissatisfaction encountered by the new 5 mp consumer/prosumer camera could just prove Fuji was right (while Sony 4 mp CCD seems to raise a little less criticism, but it is right that 4 mp CCD was expected to be just a transition and did not raise as much expectations as did the 5 mp CCD that was presented as the future stable standard for CCD resoution).
And if Fuji's prediction was right, for consumer level CCD with a small surface, the superCCD approach promoted by Fuji can well be the only one reasonable for a while, until CCD with larger area can be produced at reasonable price (to fit with the less than 1,000$ category).
The Fuji 3.3 mp superCCD that can be found in the Finepix 6800 and 6900, produces natively 6 mp pictures that have a resolution on par with Sony 5 mp CCD pictures (or at least very close), but Fuji pictures are rather noise free at ISO 100 and with a very acceptable level of noise (easily removed on computer, see http://www.pbase.com/sfjp/neat_image_noise_removal_tests ) at ISO 200 (ISO 400 not so good, though). And the Fuji colors are just perfect in daylight outdoor pictures. The main defect of the pictures produced by these Fuji cameras comes from the in-camera sharpening that creates visible artifacts at full 6 mp resolution: easy to bypass by using the "soft" sharpening setting instead of the "normal" one. A secondary defect is due to some difficulty to masterize the right WB setting for indoor shots, while with some effort it is possible to find the good solution in most cases (this might rather be a defect of the current Fuji WB algorithm than of the superCCD itself). For shots in dark night, the superCCD exhibits also a significant number of hot pixels for exposures > 1sec., which makes it not very adapted to this kind of use, although hot pixels can now be easily removed by post-processing (or in-camera processing with the ad hoc algorithm not available yet on Fuji cameras).
I think that most comparisons between top mega pixels cameras that conclude to the triumph of the Sony 5mp CCD over the Fuji 3.3 mp superCCD just got it wrong in practice. The 3.3 mp superCCD remains in my opinion the best solution available today for small surface CCD found in the consumer/prosumer price level and might remain for long if the ratio price/surface of CCD does not fall significantly in a short future.
So what? I believe that the Fuji 6800 and 6900 are incredibly underevaluated by the expert reviewers while they provide, except for night shots maybe, the best picture quality available today and may be for a while in the less than 4,000$ camera category (while the 6800 and 6900 are now sold around 500$ in the US!!). The 6800 and 6900 cameras themselves are not perfect and should be enhanced in the short future, with a lens that would remain without distortion in the corners, better night shot ability, a less brutal in-camera sharpening algorithm, a better autofocus and, please mr. Fuji, a better EVF on the 6900 successor. But I would be very sad if for marketing reasons and to comply with the criticismes of the expert reviewers Fuji would drop its superCCD, to follow the majority and use instead the Sony noisy 5 mp CCD, except if Fuji would introduce instead a large surface CCD of its own (or from Philips?).
Jean-Paul
http://www.pbase.com/sfjp
