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A100 vs A700 ISO Comparisons

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I just shot some RAW+JPG shots with a scene using my 50mm 1.7 Minolta prime and have the head to head comparison shots below at each sensitivity. The A700 does an excellent job compared to the A100 for out of camera noise. All settings were identical between the two cameras. Below are the JPG results straight out of camera. On the A700, High ISO NR was set to Normal like the camera comes out of the box. I'll process and post the RAW results next but it will take a little bit. Hope this helps some of you who are on the fence. The A100 image is on the left with each image.

ISO100



ISO200



ISO400



ISO800



ISO1600



This next one was to see how much better the A700 is compared to the A100's ISO1600. On the left is A100 ISO1600. Middle is A700 ISO3200 and Right is A700 ISO6400. From the looks of this, the A700 seems about 1.5 stops better at higher sensitivities compared to the A100. Plus Chroma noise is a lot less throughout which is very nice.

 
Staxis said:
Interesting. The A700 pictures look far softer.
Click to expand...
CMOS images tend to be softer in general because of the NR that happens on the sensor. Look at any Canon CMOS image with default settings and you'll see the same thing. They sharpen up quite well though after the fact.

Sometimes I think people forget we're looking at CCD vs. CMOS differences. :)
 
Good shots for NR comparison, but yeah, you'd have to sharpen up the A-700 shots to be fair. Sharpening will very likely increase the visibility of chroma noise, will it not? Can you turn up the in-camera sharpness to something closer to parity?

Greg
 
the A700 is very, very soft and even at ISO 1600, the A100 maintains it's detail despite the noise. I don't care if a Canon with a CMOS sensor is also soft. What I want in a Sony is the ability to control NR in camera, period. I don't shoot much at 1600 with my A100 but I keep 80-90% of my pictures shot at high ISO after a simple NR with Noiseware free edition.
 
pete helme said:
Sometimes I think people forget we're looking at CCD vs. CMOS
differences. :)
Click to expand...
This is why I bought the A100 rather than the Canon 400D in the first place. I want sharp, detailed images. CMOS seems to be lower noise: CCD sharper. As always, it looks like we cannot have it all. But technology is irrelevant, it is the quality of the images that counts.

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That test looks a little funny....I know sonolta owned an A100 and he is now shooting the A700 and his pix do not look soft like that. I bet if the A700 pix looked like that, he probably would not have purchased it and sold his A100.

http://www.sonolta.com

Reshoot, recheck focus, adjust contrast, adjust compression, adjust sharpeneing, something....that is no fair comparison you have done there IMHO.

I think you must get a general stetup together on a specific cameras, you can't just post any old snapshots.

Spider

Edit: For comparison you would need to apply similar sharpening and contrast settings. Those high contrast A100 pix look almost oversharpened as another poster has mentioned, and the low contrast A700 pix have headroom to spare.
 
The A100 images look oversharpened (see the halos around edges), while A700 images seem to have very little sharpening applied, which is actually very good. If you look closer at the A700 images you will see that the edges are still well defined and the detail is there - those images have much more PP slack than A100 IMO.
 
I shot these 3 times for each camera to ensure focus was proper. It was and these weren't "any old snapshots". This was a test to compare out of camera results with default settings. Why would I turn up sharpening on the A700 when I don't do it on the A100. Feel free to edit the images yourself and add sharpening but that wasn't the purpose. That would be like me adding NR to the A100 after the fact and saying it was as good as the A700. I also feel that the A100 looks a bit over sharpened and the A700 looks a bit under sharpened but that's how they are out of camera and the direct comparison exemplifies the under sharpening.
SpiderRico said:
That test looks a little funny....I know sonolta owned an A100 and he
is now shooting the A700 and his pix do not look soft like that. I
bet if the A700 pix looked like that, he probably would not have
purchased it and sold his A100.

http://www.sonolta.com

Reshoot, recheck focus, adjust contrast, adjust compression, adjust
sharpeneing, something....that is no fair comparison you have done
there IMHO.

I think you must get a general stetup together on a specific cameras,
you can't just post any old snapshots.

Spider

Edit: For comparison you would need to apply similar sharpening and
contrast settings. Those high contrast A100 pix look almost
oversharpened as another poster has mentioned, and the low contrast
A700 pix have headroom to spare.
Click to expand...
 
The A100 has maintained the details inspite of noise at ISO 1600. We are debating the OP's test results here.
 
Real world testing proved already that the A100 loses to much detail in the shadows. Even the best ISO800 shots could not be printed large in those lighting levels. Even KM5D at ISO1600 printed to 12 inches and more. The info is in the threads. Shooting the A100 in low lighting is disaster unless you use a flash.

I am sure dozens of people can post A700 shots that look very sharp from the camera, I promise you that. People that have used tha A100 real world know what it can do. It works well for shots in good light, these were examples posted to the forum in another thread. When the shadows came in, metering and noise becomes a real problem...Like late 3rd quarter and 4th. If I remember correctly, these forum snapshots were from the tippy-top of Soldier field with a Sigma 70-300APO DG





Once the shadows move in even ISO400 can start killing you on the A100 when you need fine details like distant faces, and clean neck and chin areas. The A100 noise destroys the very fine shadowy details, plain and simple.

Spider
 
Here's an ISO 3200 comparison. From left to right as follows: JPEG out of camera, RAW No NR, RAW High Chroma NR, RAW Neat Image NR.

To my eyes, the RAW with Neat Image is by far the best and keeps good detail at the same time.

 
This is an IDC conversions A700 IDC conversion with ZERO NR and ZERO sharpening straight from the camera settings.





Spider
 
Ivan Medvedev said:
The A100 images look oversharpened (see the halos around edges),
Click to expand...
True, but I took the ISO 100 pic into my photo editor, zoomed in, and even the A700 photo is starting to show signs of halos! SO, I sharpened it until it got halos as severe as the A100 shot, and it seems about as detailed. It seems like a dead-heat to me.

Given that, the A700 wins once you get to the higher ISOs.

Still, I think this is a good showing for the A100. I think the A100 owners are feeling a bit punchy with so many posters jumping to the A700 (although, it's not like we didn't know that many were planning to do that anyway!).

Frankly, I think this is a good test to show that the A100 is still a worthy camera. If you want to pay more for more features, you can do so.
Ivan Medvedev said:
while A700 images seem to have very little sharpening applied, which
is actually very good. If you look closer at the A700 images you will
see that the edges are still well defined and the detail is there -
those images have much more PP slack than A100 IMO.
Click to expand...
--
Gary W.
 
Man, I couldn't see any appreciable differences among any of the photos, camera or ISO dependent.
 
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