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Phil's Biased

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Phillip,

I have Sony F400 monitor set at 9300K and there is still blue cast on the S20. Most printed pictures had it as well...

Alex

PS. Love your site :)
Philip Gaudet said:
Phil Askey said:
This brings me to another point, I have the colour balance on my monitor
set to 9300K.. alot prefer 6500K.. others have no idea and may have never
calibrated their monitor. If I thought there were a REAL problem I would
have commented on it.
Click to expand...
I think you might be on to something. I also run my monitor(Sony 400PS)
at 9300K, and I don't see a blue cast from the sample S20 pictures
posted. I'd be curious to find out what color temperature the people who
see the blue cast are running their monitors at.

Philip
Click to expand...
 
I never take Phil's review, Steve's reviews, Imaging Resources reviews, Cowley's reviews, or any others as gospel. I always cross reference the information. "Read between the lines" so to speak. An aspect that one reviewer covers lightly, another may hit it more completely.

There's too little time for any site that does reviews to hit all bases and come up with the same score.

In the final analysis, I fill my hardrive with folders labeled, 2020 steve's, 2020 imaging resource, 2020 digitalcamera, 2020 whoever did a review on it! I then spend hours working on the photos in photoshop. I see how much adjustment latitude is present. This is very important to me. Some cameras produce images that just aren't as "workable" as others. My monitor is accurately calibrated. It's set to 8300K. My printer prints exactly what colors appear on my monitor. I'm very careful and particular in choosing a camera. I only make poverty level wages. I used to be middle class, but that level no longer exist! :)

In the final analysis, I feel the decision is mine and mine alone. If Phil or George or Arnold or whoever said the camera is a 1 and I think it's a minus 2 after I bought it and don't like it, it's my but I kick. It was my decision, my money, my time, my extended effort (or lack of) that put the less than exceptable beast in my hands. The images are there to view and work with. If there's only two, I'll wait till there's 50 before making a decision. Again, all reviews are far too limited in expended time to expect a final decision to aid in my purchase. Phil, nor anyone else controls my brain. They can only provide clues, some better, some worse, to assist my deciscion. Just make sure you get a real good stack of clues! :)
GC said:
Phil, while I have always appreicated your efforts in coming up with many
excellent reviews, I have to say, after carefully reading your S20 and
4700 reviews and actually having some experience (owning) with both
cameras, that you were obviously biased in those reviews.

The biggest protest that I have is that you gave 10 for the S20's image
quality and a 8 (quite low, for your standards) for the 4700. From my
experience with both cameras, the 4700's images have been consistently
warm and pleasant, with very accurate colour reproduction and great white
balance. On the other hand, the S20 consistently produces pictures that
have a bluish cast (especially on skin tones) and the colours always look
pale and are not accurate when compared to the real objects' colours.
I'm saying this after comparing the images coming from both cameras for
the same objectives under the same lighting conditions.

You also indicated that the flash on teh S20 seemed to be more powerful
than the 4700's, when indeed this is also not the case. Both flashes are
weak when compared to the 950, but neither performs any better than the
other. There are teh same level of dropoff at the corners when the flash
fires from about 2.5m away from the object.

I'm also quite skeptical about your score on their CCD/lens combination,
where the S20 scored a 9.5 and the 4700 a 7!! Where exactly did the 4700
get 2.5 marks taken off when compared to the S20? It's got a more
powerful zoom lens than the S20, and the CCDs seem to capture light just
as well as the S20, if not better (judging from their performance under
low light conditions).

While I understand that Fuji's initial marketing efforts in promoting the
4700 as a 4.3 megapixel camera was a faulty one (because it only has 2.4
megapixels), I hope when you were reviewing these cameras that you were
treating the 4700 as such, and not a true 4.3 megapixel digicam. Had you
done that, I think the 4700's image quality should deserve at least a 9
(if your definition of image quality takes into account anything more
than just resolution and definition, such as colour saturation, white
balance and colour reproduction accuracy), and S20 deserves at best an 8.

Feature-wise, I don't see why the S20 can score the same as the 4700,
when everything that can be found in teh S20 (except for Stitch assist)
can be found in the 4700, but the 4700 has a more powerful zoom lens,
full manual focus, portrait mode, average matrix metering, and an avi
movie recording mode.

Another shortcoming of the S20, which was not mentioned, is that
resolution is set at 2000x1500 in the automatic mode and can't be
altered. This is pure stupidity in my opinion. Why can one only choose
to save in different resolutions when using the manual mode?

I have based my decision to buy the S20 almost solely on your S20 review
because of your credibility and expertise. And it is also because of
your 4700 review that, even after buying the 4700, I went out to get a
supposedly "better" camera (the S20), as it scored almost higher in every
single category than the 4700. I strongly believe that your final
ratings for the two cameras (S20 - very highly recommended; and 4700 -
good) do not reflect their true abilities and are not justified. I
simply can't see why the S20 can be rated as being a camera that is 3
"grades" better than the 4700 (Good, recommended, highly recommended,
very highly recommended???). If I were to rate these cameras myself, now
that I have thoroughly explored them both at the same time, I would give
the 4700 a "highly recommended" and the S20 a "recommended".

Just to back my arguments, I'll post pictures taken with both cameras of
the same objects under the same lighting conditions for your reference.
Stay tuned.
Click to expand...
 
Phil Askey said:
Fred H. said:
Well, Mr. Askey, now I know why you did not knock the Nikon 950 or the
990 for its definite blue cast. The problem with your use of the 'whiter
whites' explanation is that not only the whites are changed in color. I
Click to expand...
Show me a digital camera that can shoot a gray wall without ANY cast for
less than $10,000...
Click to expand...
Mr. Askey:

Well, ANY is a big word, but there are several digital cameras which have considerably less color cast than the Nikon 950 (and apparently the Canon S20 and others). Most of the Kodak cameras (the Kodak DCS 330 is a good example)as well as the Sony DSC F505 have quite good color balance under most circumstances. Also, from what I have seen of the image samples, GC has a bone to pick with you inasmuch as the strength of the Fuji pics is in their color balance although weak in image detail. My problem with your rating system is that you (and you are not alone in this) place too much emphasis on sharpness and not nearly enough on color accuracy or balance. You could say that your bias is to weight image detail over color fidelity while I am biased in the other direction - I just think that you need to readjust your scale somewhat. I think that I can understand how this has come about historically since it was not too long ago that the holy grail of digicams was pixel count, but now that pixel count is less of a problem in the newest generation it would seem to serve the digicam community if you were more critical of such casts.

Fred H.
 
Philip Gaudet said:
I think you might be on to something. I also run my monitor(Sony 400PS)
at 9300K, and I don't see a blue cast from the sample S20 pictures
posted. I'd be curious to find out what color temperature the people who
see the blue cast are running their monitors at.
Click to expand...
Philip:

I have run my monitor (NEC Multisync FE700) from its preset range of 7500 to 9000 and while I can see some extra warmth at the lower temperature, I can see even more blue at the 8500 level that I normally have it set to (and at 9000 the blue is definitely there).

Fred H.
 
Phil Askey said:
When I reviewed the S20 it was the first 3+ megapixel camera I'd had my
hands on, and YES it produced the perfect 10 image quality for its class,
size and price.
Click to expand...
Phil, first of all, I want to let you know that I do appreciate all the efforts you have put into writing up these wonderful reviews, which I have found to be extremely useful when someone is planning of making a digicam purchase. However, my claim against the S20's picture quality still stands.

It seems to me that the S20 is the only camera in its class in terms of size, price and pixel count. There's no other camera out there with the S20's compact size and pixel count, is there? So when you say that it scores a perfect 10 in picture image in its class, you are really comparing the camera to itself. Besides, I thought the ratings that you give to all the reviewed digicams were relative to other reviewed cameras. Otherwise, what would be the point? Cameras that have more features are bound to score higher than those with less in the "feature" category, regardless of how much they're priced at or how bulky or compact they are, as these attributes would be reflected in other cateogories such as "ease of use" and "value for money".

And if you DO segment cameras into categories by pixel count, then the 4700 should only have been compared against other 2 megapixel digicams, and should thus have scored higher than a "7" in image quality. Either way, I still don't see how your argument is justified.

And I also agree with Fred that you ought to start being more critical on image attributes other than sharpness, as this seems to have been the factor that weighed most heavily in your reviews.

Finally, I hope you're taking my comments as constructive criticisms as opposed to a bitter digicam owner venting at you. I do like my S20 for most of its features and I agree wholeheartedly with your review, except for the blue cast. Perhaps you can take some pictures with the S20 (if you still have one around) of some human faces under less than optimal lighting conditions and add them to your current S20 gallery, and let people visiting this forum be the judge.

GC
 
I do agree that Mr. Askey is a little bit biased towards Canon's cameras. Throughout the reviews of S10 and S20, Mr. Askey did not acknowledge any of the color problem, and most importantly the focus problem. The images from S10 and S20 also display a very serious out-of-focus problem that seems to be a combination of poor focus, overexposure and image rendering. While the images look good if you view them full screen, close inspect does show the problem very clearly. What is wrong, Canon?
GC said:
Phil, while I have always appreicated your efforts in coming up with many
excellent reviews, I have to say, after carefully reading your S20 and
4700 reviews and actually having some experience (owning) with both
cameras, that you were obviously biased in those reviews.

The biggest protest that I have is that you gave 10 for the S20's image
quality and a 8 (quite low, for your standards) for the 4700. From my
experience with both cameras, the 4700's images have been consistently
warm and pleasant, with very accurate colour reproduction and great white
balance. On the other hand, the S20 consistently produces pictures that
have a bluish cast (especially on skin tones) and the colours always look
pale and are not accurate when compared to the real objects' colours.
I'm saying this after comparing the images coming from both cameras for
the same objectives under the same lighting conditions.

You also indicated that the flash on teh S20 seemed to be more powerful
than the 4700's, when indeed this is also not the case. Both flashes are
weak when compared to the 950, but neither performs any better than the
other. There are teh same level of dropoff at the corners when the flash
fires from about 2.5m away from the object.

I'm also quite skeptical about your score on their CCD/lens combination,
where the S20 scored a 9.5 and the 4700 a 7!! Where exactly did the 4700
get 2.5 marks taken off when compared to the S20? It's got a more
powerful zoom lens than the S20, and the CCDs seem to capture light just
as well as the S20, if not better (judging from their performance under
low light conditions).

While I understand that Fuji's initial marketing efforts in promoting the
4700 as a 4.3 megapixel camera was a faulty one (because it only has 2.4
megapixels), I hope when you were reviewing these cameras that you were
treating the 4700 as such, and not a true 4.3 megapixel digicam. Had you
done that, I think the 4700's image quality should deserve at least a 9
(if your definition of image quality takes into account anything more
than just resolution and definition, such as colour saturation, white
balance and colour reproduction accuracy), and S20 deserves at best an 8.

Feature-wise, I don't see why the S20 can score the same as the 4700,
when everything that can be found in teh S20 (except for Stitch assist)
can be found in the 4700, but the 4700 has a more powerful zoom lens,
full manual focus, portrait mode, average matrix metering, and an avi
movie recording mode.

Another shortcoming of the S20, which was not mentioned, is that
resolution is set at 2000x1500 in the automatic mode and can't be
altered. This is pure stupidity in my opinion. Why can one only choose
to save in different resolutions when using the manual mode?

I have based my decision to buy the S20 almost solely on your S20 review
because of your credibility and expertise. And it is also because of
your 4700 review that, even after buying the 4700, I went out to get a
supposedly "better" camera (the S20), as it scored almost higher in every
single category than the 4700. I strongly believe that your final
ratings for the two cameras (S20 - very highly recommended; and 4700 -
good) do not reflect their true abilities and are not justified. I
simply can't see why the S20 can be rated as being a camera that is 3
"grades" better than the 4700 (Good, recommended, highly recommended,
very highly recommended???). If I were to rate these cameras myself, now
that I have thoroughly explored them both at the same time, I would give
the 4700 a "highly recommended" and the S20 a "recommended".

Just to back my arguments, I'll post pictures taken with both cameras of
the same objects under the same lighting conditions for your reference.
Stay tuned.
Click to expand...
 
Fred H. said:
Phil Askey said:
Fred H. said:
Well, Mr. Askey, now I know why you did not knock the Nikon 950 or the
990 for its definite blue cast. The problem with your use of the 'whiter
whites' explanation is that not only the whites are changed in color. I
Click to expand...
Show me a digital camera that can shoot a gray wall without ANY cast for
less than $10,000...
Click to expand...
Mr. Askey:
Well, ANY is a big word, but there are several digital cameras which have
considerably less color cast than the Nikon 950 (and apparently the Canon
S20 and others). Most of the Kodak cameras (the Kodak DCS 330 is a good
example)as well as the Sony DSC F505 have quite good color balance under
most circumstances. Also, from what I have seen of the image samples, GC
has a bone to pick with you inasmuch as the strength of the Fuji pics is
in their color balance although weak in image detail. My problem with
your rating system is that you (and you are not alone in this) place too
much emphasis on sharpness and not nearly enough on color accuracy or
balance. You could say that your bias is to weight image detail over
color fidelity while I am biased in the other direction - I just think
that you need to readjust your scale somewhat. I think that I can
understand how this has come about historically since it was not too long
ago that the holy grail of digicams was pixel count, but now that pixel
count is less of a problem in the newest generation it would seem to
serve the digicam community if you were more critical of such casts.

Fred H.
Click to expand...
In my experience, Sony 505 & Kodak 290 have better colour than my Nikon 950 (V1.3), NO DC of prosumer class now give accurate colour within the tolerance of human eye, but there are good & not so good. I'm now Photoshop expert because I constantly using photoshop to correct the colour balance of my 950 pictures, what a headache!

The flash photo colour balance & often over-exposure problem (even with SB26 & the SKE-900 flash bracket) are other boring issues to me. I don't say Nikon 950 is a bad camera, but it's not so good as in your review.

Just wait for 990 & hope Nikon can improve them all.
 
I normally don't get into these discussions but this is quite interesting. I've been looking at and downloading images for some years with the bulk of them being Nikon, Kodak, and Olympus shots. I think that Oly and Kodak does a very good job at color balance and rendition but have generally found the Nikon to be a bit flat and vey slightly off color(correctable in Photoshop, though). Also, I often see significant color fringes in Nikon shots at sharp gradients that I do not see in other cameras including my Kodak? Does anyone else see the fringes? I don't recall that I've seen any mention of the fringes. I've generally assumed that they were the downside to processing that otherwise provides very sharp pictures. The corollary to this is that Kodak and Oly images are not as sharp but also don't exhibit fringes. I guess it depends on what you prefer. Any other ideas?
 
Leon Wittwer said:
I normally don't get into these discussions but this is quite
interesting. I've been looking at and downloading images for some years
with the bulk of them being Nikon, Kodak, and Olympus shots. I think
that Oly and Kodak does a very good job at color balance and rendition
but have generally found the Nikon to be a bit flat and vey slightly off
color(correctable in Photoshop, though). Also, I often see significant
color fringes in Nikon shots at sharp gradients that I do not see in
other cameras including my Kodak? Does anyone else see the fringes? I
don't recall that I've seen any mention of the fringes. I've generally
assumed that they were the downside to processing that otherwise provides
very sharp pictures. The corollary to this is that Kodak and Oly images
are not as sharp but also don't exhibit fringes. I guess it depends on
what you prefer. Any other ideas?
Click to expand...
Leon,

The color fringe (red/green) problem has been around since the 2.11 megapixel CCD's. It's gotten worse with the new 3.3's and is most likely a result of too many pixels on the small CCD colupled with too small a lens to handle this. It's worse for some reason with the Nikon's than with the Sony and Olympus - probably because of the lens size. It's been pretty well hashed out on Steve's forums, but there are trade-offs. The fact that you can use a tremendous number of peripheral lenses with the CP950/990, get incredible macros, etc. are the advantages of the lens design, while the color fringing, especially in high contrast areas seems to be the downside. The fact that this problem is rarely seen in the D1, Sony D770, Olympus C2500L and other digital cameras with larger CCD's and lenses (in relation to their respective resolutions) seems to indicate that manufacturers need to address lens size/quality and CCD size if they are to produce color fringe free pictures at the new higher resolution. You might read my earlier posts "an Argument for Fewer Pixels" for more information.

Lin
 
If you set monitor to anywhere from 7500 to 9300+ K all your (color correct)pictures will look blueish.
Change your setting to 6500K and don't look at the screen for five minutes.

Then you see your screen again, white still will look like white and no blue cast.

Eugene
Fred H. said:
Philip Gaudet said:
I think you might be on to something. I also run my monitor(Sony 400PS)
at 9300K, and I don't see a blue cast from the sample S20 pictures
posted. I'd be curious to find out what color temperature the people who
see the blue cast are running their monitors at.
Click to expand...
Philip:
I have run my monitor (NEC Multisync FE700) from its preset range of 7500
to 9000 and while I can see some extra warmth at the lower temperature, I
can see even more blue at the 8500 level that I normally have it set to
(and at 9000 the blue is definitely there).

Fred H.
Click to expand...
 
The reason you don't see blue cast is that Sony monitors and cameras (TVs too)are in the class of it's own. They are not so good to use for color viewing.

No flames please. In cource of my job I see many different monitors and I have found IMHO that Hitachi tubes are much better.

Eugene
Philip Gaudet said:
Phil Askey said:
This brings me to another point, I have the colour balance on my monitor
set to 9300K.. alot prefer 6500K.. others have no idea and may have never
calibrated their monitor. If I thought there were a REAL problem I would
have commented on it.
Click to expand...
I think you might be on to something. I also run my monitor(Sony 400PS)
at 9300K, and I don't see a blue cast from the sample S20 pictures
posted. I'd be curious to find out what color temperature the people who
see the blue cast are running their monitors at.

Philip
Click to expand...
 
Don't assume everybody agree on blue cast. I don't. My monitor is set to 6500K

and I see no blue cast in any Canon's model pictures. But I do see very little to extreme orange cast in Fuji, Sony and Olympus pictures.

Eugene
GC said:
My points are directed to Phil's S20 and 4700 reviews in particular and
are not intended to discount his efforts and expertise in digital
photography, nor his views in general. I do think that he, as an
individual, is not biased; I'm simply suggesting, from strong evidence
(having played with both cameras) that the S20 is worse than his review
suggests and the 4700 is not nearly as bad. To those who have NOT had
any experience with BOTH cameras, please don't take sides before you have
a chance to look at more pictures from the 4700 and perhaps a chance to
actually try to use it.
GC said:
Phil, while I have always appreicated your efforts in coming up with many
excellent reviews, I have to say, after carefully reading your S20 and
4700 reviews and actually having some experience (owning) with both
cameras, that you were obviously biased in those reviews.

The biggest protest that I have is that you gave 10 for the S20's image
quality and a 8 (quite low, for your standards) for the 4700. From my
experience with both cameras, the 4700's images have been consistently
warm and pleasant, with very accurate colour reproduction and great white
balance. On the other hand, the S20 consistently produces pictures that
have a bluish cast (especially on skin tones) and the colours always look
pale and are not accurate when compared to the real objects' colours.
I'm saying this after comparing the images coming from both cameras for
the same objectives under the same lighting conditions.

You also indicated that the flash on teh S20 seemed to be more powerful
than the 4700's, when indeed this is also not the case. Both flashes are
weak when compared to the 950, but neither performs any better than the
other. There are teh same level of dropoff at the corners when the flash
fires from about 2.5m away from the object.

I'm also quite skeptical about your score on their CCD/lens combination,
where the S20 scored a 9.5 and the 4700 a 7!! Where exactly did the 4700
get 2.5 marks taken off when compared to the S20? It's got a more
powerful zoom lens than the S20, and the CCDs seem to capture light just
as well as the S20, if not better (judging from their performance under
low light conditions).

While I understand that Fuji's initial marketing efforts in promoting the
4700 as a 4.3 megapixel camera was a faulty one (because it only has 2.4
megapixels), I hope when you were reviewing these cameras that you were
treating the 4700 as such, and not a true 4.3 megapixel digicam. Had you
done that, I think the 4700's image quality should deserve at least a 9
(if your definition of image quality takes into account anything more
than just resolution and definition, such as colour saturation, white
balance and colour reproduction accuracy), and S20 deserves at best an 8.

Feature-wise, I don't see why the S20 can score the same as the 4700,
when everything that can be found in teh S20 (except for Stitch assist)
can be found in the 4700, but the 4700 has a more powerful zoom lens,
full manual focus, portrait mode, average matrix metering, and an avi
movie recording mode.

Another shortcoming of the S20, which was not mentioned, is that
resolution is set at 2000x1500 in the automatic mode and can't be
altered. This is pure stupidity in my opinion. Why can one only choose
to save in different resolutions when using the manual mode?

I have based my decision to buy the S20 almost solely on your S20 review
because of your credibility and expertise. And it is also because of
your 4700 review that, even after buying the 4700, I went out to get a
supposedly "better" camera (the S20), as it scored almost higher in every
single category than the 4700. I strongly believe that your final
ratings for the two cameras (S20 - very highly recommended; and 4700 -
good) do not reflect their true abilities and are not justified. I
simply can't see why the S20 can be rated as being a camera that is 3
"grades" better than the 4700 (Good, recommended, highly recommended,
very highly recommended???). If I were to rate these cameras myself, now
that I have thoroughly explored them both at the same time, I would give
the 4700 a "highly recommended" and the S20 a "recommended".

Just to back my arguments, I'll post pictures taken with both cameras of
the same objects under the same lighting conditions for your reference.
Stay tuned.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Eugene:

Thanks for telling me what I see on my monitor. For one thing, my monitor does not have a preset for 6500 but even if I use the custom setup and get what may be 6500, many pictures that I see as just fine with my current setting will look a bit too reddish (warm). It's interesting that Phil Askey sets his monitor to 9300 while you set yours to 6500. Other than the fact that different manufacturers may have different color calibrations, the range of color temperature of my monitor falls well within (and with a narrower range) of those bounds. I think that I will take the geometric mean of your setting and Phil Askeys setting as probably a good compromise and leave it at that. The geometric mean comes out to about 8000 (believe me(!!!), it makes very little difference to what I set my monitor in the cast that I see in the bad pics).

Fred H.
 
You have a very good point.
A 10 on image quality, I don't think so may be a 7.
Frances.
GC said:
I still think he was biased against the 4700 because it didn't turn out
to be what Fuji initially promised (4.3 megapixels). And for some
reason, he just TOTALLY ignored the S20's white balance problem.
Frances said:
Frances.
GC said:
Phil, while I have always appreicated your efforts in coming up with many
excellent reviews, I have to say, after carefully reading your S20 and
4700 reviews and actually having some experience (owning) with both
cameras, that you were obviously biased in those reviews.

The biggest protest that I have is that you gave 10 for the S20's image
quality and a 8 (quite low, for your standards) for the 4700. From my
experience with both cameras, the 4700's images have been consistently
warm and pleasant, with very accurate colour reproduction and great white
balance. On the other hand, the S20 consistently produces pictures that
have a bluish cast (especially on skin tones) and the colours always look
pale and are not accurate when compared to the real objects' colours.
I'm saying this after comparing the images coming from both cameras for
the same objectives under the same lighting conditions.

You also indicated that the flash on teh S20 seemed to be more powerful
than the 4700's, when indeed this is also not the case. Both flashes are
weak when compared to the 950, but neither performs any better than the
other. There are teh same level of dropoff at the corners when the flash
fires from about 2.5m away from the object.

I'm also quite skeptical about your score on their CCD/lens combination,
where the S20 scored a 9.5 and the 4700 a 7!! Where exactly did the 4700
get 2.5 marks taken off when compared to the S20? It's got a more
powerful zoom lens than the S20, and the CCDs seem to capture light just
as well as the S20, if not better (judging from their performance under
low light conditions).

While I understand that Fuji's initial marketing efforts in promoting the
4700 as a 4.3 megapixel camera was a faulty one (because it only has 2.4
megapixels), I hope when you were reviewing these cameras that you were
treating the 4700 as such, and not a true 4.3 megapixel digicam. Had you
done that, I think the 4700's image quality should deserve at least a 9
(if your definition of image quality takes into account anything more
than just resolution and definition, such as colour saturation, white
balance and colour reproduction accuracy), and S20 deserves at best an 8.

Feature-wise, I don't see why the S20 can score the same as the 4700,
when everything that can be found in teh S20 (except for Stitch assist)
can be found in the 4700, but the 4700 has a more powerful zoom lens,
full manual focus, portrait mode, average matrix metering, and an avi
movie recording mode.

Another shortcoming of the S20, which was not mentioned, is that
resolution is set at 2000x1500 in the automatic mode and can't be
altered. This is pure stupidity in my opinion. Why can one only choose
to save in different resolutions when using the manual mode?

I have based my decision to buy the S20 almost solely on your S20 review
because of your credibility and expertise. And it is also because of
your 4700 review that, even after buying the 4700, I went out to get a
supposedly "better" camera (the S20), as it scored almost higher in every
single category than the 4700. I strongly believe that your final
ratings for the two cameras (S20 - very highly recommended; and 4700 -
good) do not reflect their true abilities and are not justified. I
simply can't see why the S20 can be rated as being a camera that is 3
"grades" better than the 4700 (Good, recommended, highly recommended,
very highly recommended???). If I were to rate these cameras myself, now
that I have thoroughly explored them both at the same time, I would give
the 4700 a "highly recommended" and the S20 a "recommended".

Just to back my arguments, I'll post pictures taken with both cameras of
the same objects under the same lighting conditions for your reference.
Stay tuned.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
I saw the earlier thread on number of pixels and somewhat agree. I haven't seen see the problem in any of my Kodaks and their ccds are not all that large. Kodak does make their own ccds, though. In any event, the fringing should be part of the overall evaluation done by Phil or anyone else. Perhaps reviews should mention problems with optics, sizes of ccds or whatever particularly when comparing with cameras who don't have such problems. Other cameras other than Nikon also have a large number of lenses available. The macro capability is nice. I have a perception that Nikon gets good press around here and other makers do not. What will you bet that Phil's review of the 990 will not mention fringing if it is there. Does his 950 review mention it. That perception by others is probably fueling this thread. It is one of the better threads. I'm learning a lot.
Lin Evans said:
Leon,
The color fringe (red/green) problem has been around since the 2.11
megapixel CCD's. It's gotten worse with the new 3.3's and is most likely
a result of too many pixels on the small CCD colupled with too small a
lens to handle this. It's worse for some reason with the Nikon's than
with the Sony and Olympus - probably because of the lens size. It's been
pretty well hashed out on Steve's forums, but there are trade-offs. The
fact that you can use a tremendous number of peripheral lenses with the
CP950/990, get incredible macros, etc. are the advantages of the lens
design, while the color fringing, especially in high contrast areas seems
to be the downside. The fact that this problem is rarely seen in the D1,
Sony D770, Olympus C2500L and other digital cameras with larger CCD's
and lenses (in relation to their respective resolutions) seems to
indicate that manufacturers need to address lens size/quality and CCD
size if they are to produce color fringe free pictures at the new higher
resolution. You might read my earlier posts "an Argument for Fewer
Pixels" for more information.

Lin
Click to expand...
 
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikoncp950/default.asp?page=11
Leon Wittwer said:
Lin Evans said:
Leon,
The color fringe (red/green) problem has been around since the 2.11
megapixel CCD's. It's gotten worse with the new 3.3's and is most likely
a result of too many pixels on the small CCD colupled with too small a
lens to handle this. It's worse for some reason with the Nikon's than
with the Sony and Olympus - probably because of the lens size. It's been
pretty well hashed out on Steve's forums, but there are trade-offs. The
fact that you can use a tremendous number of peripheral lenses with the
CP950/990, get incredible macros, etc. are the advantages of the lens
design, while the color fringing, especially in high contrast areas seems
to be the downside. The fact that this problem is rarely seen in the D1,
Sony D770, Olympus C2500L and other digital cameras with larger CCD's
and lenses (in relation to their respective resolutions) seems to
indicate that manufacturers need to address lens size/quality and CCD
size if they are to produce color fringe free pictures at the new higher
resolution. You might read my earlier posts "an Argument for Fewer
Pixels" for more information.

Lin
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Leon Wittwer said:
not. What will you bet that Phil's review of the 990 will not mention
fringing if it is there. Does his 950 review mention it. That
Click to expand...
Duh!!! Isn't it amusing when people make complete asses of themselves just to beat up on the webmaster?

For what it's worth my review of the 950 wasn't the first on the net but was THE FIRST to point out purple fringing... It started this whole debate!

Go read the 950 review before you make comments on it...
 
So, how do you explain that if I set my monitor to 9300K I see exactly same problem as you see but at 6500 everything is dandy?

Eugene

PS. Read my other post about Trinitron tubes.
We have NEC monitor at work and it is based on Trinitron tube.
Bad colors and too much glare. Have not tested any pictures on it.
Fred H. said:
Eugene:

Thanks for telling me what I see on my monitor. For one thing, my monitor
does not have a preset for 6500 but even if I use the custom setup and
get what may be 6500, many pictures that I see as just fine with my
current setting will look a bit too reddish (warm). It's interesting
that Phil Askey sets his monitor to 9300 while you set yours to 6500.
Other than the fact that different manufacturers may have different color
calibrations, the range of color temperature of my monitor falls well
within (and with a narrower range) of those bounds. I think that I will
take the geometric mean of your setting and Phil Askeys setting as
probably a good compromise and leave it at that. The geometric mean comes
out to about 8000 (believe me(!!!), it makes very little difference to
what I set my monitor in the cast that I see in the bad pics).

Fred H.
Click to expand...
 
One more thing, majority of the pictures are taken in no higher than 6500k.
So that is why I set my monitor to this setting.

Eugene
Fred H. said:
Eugene:

Thanks for telling me what I see on my monitor. For one thing, my monitor
does not have a preset for 6500 but even if I use the custom setup and
get what may be 6500, many pictures that I see as just fine with my
current setting will look a bit too reddish (warm). It's interesting
that Phil Askey sets his monitor to 9300 while you set yours to 6500.
Other than the fact that different manufacturers may have different color
calibrations, the range of color temperature of my monitor falls well
within (and with a narrower range) of those bounds. I think that I will
take the geometric mean of your setting and Phil Askeys setting as
probably a good compromise and leave it at that. The geometric mean comes
out to about 8000 (believe me(!!!), it makes very little difference to
what I set my monitor in the cast that I see in the bad pics).

Fred H.
Click to expand...
 
I've read this post and many others with interest. Can one not simply say that various people have various opinions to which they're entitled? various numbers of other people attach their own value to these opinions As a consequence of both someone's popularity standing reputation and so on their opinion will be held in either a greater or lower amount of esteem by different numbers of people. It would seem fairly clear that Phil's opinion is held in fairly high esteem by a large number of people. There are other people such as me who for whatever reason have their opinions held is lower esteem than Phil having a lower level of knowledge expertise and standing and therefore express opinions which whilst hopefully interesting are nonetheless in certain specific contexts less important.

I could be pretty virtriolic in respect of those people who launch endless tedious flame wars upon people in this forum, I guess they must hate more people than they like and be fairly lonely - but of course these people have their own opinions - to which I presume few people attach much value.

Regards Michael
 
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