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Olympus C-5050 Review on Dpreview!!!

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Absolutely correct. That's why I put CA into quotes when I referred to what Phil noticed. If one wants to see the real chromatic aberration of the lens, this is the resolution test (2,2MB image) on D. Etchells review:
http://66.227.34.3/PRODS/C5050/FULLRES/C55RESWLF.JPG

You can easily see there that aberration is a faint purple halo on objects away from the centre of the viewing field. Shot was taken at f1.8, showing CA in all of its glory.
Brian said:
CA is the result of the lens, but the complaint that Phil had
really isn't CA, it is blooming.

Blooming occurs when a photosite on a CCD completely saturates in
other words goes to white and the adjacent photosites are still
dark. When a photosite completely saturates the CCD must do
something with the excess charge. So on the CCD there are
"electronic gutters" that carry the charge off the chip. However,
these gutters can only carry so much charge. When they can carry
no more, the charge floods into adjacent photosites and causes
blooming or more commonly known as purple fringing. The chip that
is used on this camera has a very high pixel density. In other
words it's a small chip with a heck of a lot of pixels. And
because of this the "gutters" are very small and not able to deal
with excessive charges.

You are right in that this is a hardware issue and cannot be fixed
by a firmware up date, but the problem actually lies in the CCD and
not the lens.

Now there is one way to prevent the purple fringing and that is to
use a very small aperture like f7 or f8. This slows the rate at
which the photosites recieve the charge and therefore make it
possible for the "gutters" to do their job.
Click to expand...
 
One thing that constantly annoys me is people who claim that printing drastically changes the output and you can't compare cameras without printing, that is pure BS. Everything in the image will be reproduced in the print.

Actually I don't see any evidence that he did anything other than he suggested. He printed a crop at 300 dpi without blowing it up, that much is clear from the scan, which is 600 dpi and will double the size of the crop when placed next to it (and quadrupal for 150 dpi scanned at 600dpi).

300 dpi is considered a very high quality print. Maybe it is you who failed to realize that the area he is showing would be less than 1 inch across on his output (less than 2 inches in the big one). Your more realistic argument should be can anyone really see the jaggies when they it is less than an inch across. But they are certainly present.

Peter
Kane said:
IMHO, Jared's findings have been so far, and unless proven
otherwise, are always misleading. Funny that his "300 dpi" images
are grainy even on a 72 dpi RGB monitor.

He routinely doctors up images in his comparisons of cameras to
prove his point, rather than provide straight examples.
Downsampling, Upsampling, blowing up, sharpening pretty much as he
decides.

In this example which he has provided, I believe he blew up the
photograph a few hundred percent, then printed it out at 300 DPI,
rather than printing it at 100% actual size.
Click to expand...
 
Joel Feinleib said:
Overall, I think this was a very fair review and the way I read it
the conclusion was extremely positive--I would think the fact that
the resolution matched the vaunted 717s would raise more than a few
eyebrows among those who expected little from the "same old lens"
and a an supposedly overcrowded ccd. Factoring in the price of this
camera only makes it look like a better value.

I was surprised however that Phil didn't really shed light on the
"aggressive default in-camera sharpening vs. noise" issue. He
admits that the default sharpening is too aggressive and states his
preference for a setting of -2. But it appears the noise tests are
done with sharpening at 0. I would have liked to see the "noise"
test done at different levels of sharpening. The point, as someone
mentioned above, is to see how the camera performs at it's optimal
settings. And of course if I am comparing across camera's I want to
see how they compare at their optimal settings--the mere fact that
I can adjust the settings makes the deafult limitations irrelevant.
I realize this just adds to the reviewer's time burden, but it
seems pretty simple to do I'm disappointed this reveiw didn't clear
it up.
Click to expand...
Exactly. How come he matches ISO for the noise comparison test and not sharpness, and contrast. The color test shows the dynamic range of the 5050 and 717. It's certainly not enough to match ISO only for a fare and unbiased test, which is unfortunately not the case again.
Joel Feinleib said:
As for CA, I guess it's just less of a problem for me in practice.
I have yet to attempt to portray aluminum foil in my shots so maybe
I just have a different preference in subjects from some of you.
But seriously, after taking probably 20,000 pictures with a C3040,
c2100 and now the c5050 (all cameras with perhaps above average
propensity to show the purple fringing whether it's technically
"CA" or "blooming"), I can honestly say that it has yet to ruin a
really high quality picture of mine. It does show up in many
pictures that are over-exposed or try to capture scenes too high in
contrast. But to my eyes, these are pictures that suffer from flaws
in composition and or exposure, anyway, and the purple fringe is
but a symptom of that. Anyway, if you take a great shot and you get
too much for your tastes there are several very easy ways to
correct for it. In fact, I often find that pictures with a lot of
purple fringing tend to look much better in B&W than in color
anyway because of the areas of extreme contrast. Also the amount of
frining in a printed picture is much, much less noticeable than the
100% or 2000% screen view.

One last observation. The acid test of any camera's picture quality
has to be prints rather than 100% screen enlargements. Many of the
imperfections you see at 72 dpi are simply not visible at 300dpi.
It is impossible to show print quailty in an online review, but I'd
at least like to hear the reviewers opinion of the same size prints
of identical scenes from a single printer across camera. My
experience using an Epson 1280 is that the 5050 makes excellent
prints--I've done up to 11x14, so far. They are very sharp; color
is very good and I just haven't seen any p[roblem with noise
(especially since much of the "noise", I believe, is in fact,
sharpening artifacts which always look worse on screen than in the
print because the appearance of oversharpening compensates for the
softness induced by the digital printing process).
Click to expand...
Another good point. I remeber having read that Canon users tend to add grain to their photos before printing them to make the prints appear sharpes. There was recently a thread in this forum discussing the accutance of 5050, look there for further detail if interest aroused.
Joel Feinleib said:
Anyone who wants to see what good pictures from the 5050 look like
in actual use rather than contrived test shots is wlecome to check
out mine (alebit in 800x600 size) on pbase:
http://www.pbase.com/jfeinleib/olympus_c5050_samples

In sum, I find it hard to believe that anyone who pays $700-800 for
this camera will be disappointed with the quality of pictures it
can produce to say nothing of how much a pleasure it is to actually
operate.

http://www.pbase.com/jfeinleib
http://www.photosig.com/viewuser.php?id=23754
Click to expand...
--
Alien
 
At F5.0 it was starting to diminish, but at f7.0 there were still signs of it. I suspect at f8.0 it would be gone completely.
olyboy said:
Brian said:
CA is the result of the lens, but the complaint that Phil had
really isn't CA, it is blooming.

Blooming occurs when a photosite on a CCD completely saturates in
other words goes to white and the adjacent photosites are still
dark. When a photosite completely saturates the CCD must do
something with the excess charge. So on the CCD there are
"electronic gutters" that carry the charge off the chip. However,
these gutters can only carry so much charge. When they can carry
no more, the charge floods into adjacent photosites and causes
blooming or more commonly known as purple fringing. The chip that
is used on this camera has a very high pixel density. In other
words it's a small chip with a heck of a lot of pixels. And
because of this the "gutters" are very small and not able to deal
with excessive charges.

You are right in that this is a hardware issue and cannot be fixed
by a firmware up date, but the problem actually lies in the CCD and
not the lens.

Now there is one way to prevent the purple fringing and that is to
use a very small aperture like f7 or f8. This slows the rate at
which the photosites recieve the charge and therefore make it
possible for the "gutters" to do their job.
Click to expand...
--



Olympus..C21OOUZ since 28/1/02 A-2OO tele, Oly P-4OO ..
HP97OCxi ZI0_USB Sanyo16OO Manfrotto 19ODB+141RC
My mini gallery http://www.sigma-sa.com/kt/pelion/index.htm
' My primary language is Greek '
Click to expand...
 
Peter G said:
One thing that constantly annoys me is people who claim that
printing drastically changes the output and you can't compare
cameras without printing, that is pure BS. Everything in the image
will be reproduced in the print.
Click to expand...
More nonsense. "everything in the image will be reproduced in the print" ONLY MUCH SMALLER. That is the whole point. What I can see with the naked eye at 72dpi on my screen I can't see when the same information is crammed into 1/4 the space, i.e. 300dpi.
Peter G said:
300 dpi is considered a very high quality print. Maybe it is you
who failed to realize that the area he is showing would be less
than 1 inch across on his output (less than 2 inches in the big
one). Your more realistic argument should be can anyone really see
the jaggies when they it is less than an inch across. But they are
certainly present.
Click to expand...
If I blow up a 1x1 inch area to 4x5 inches then I am sure we will see evidence of digitization. But that is no point at all. In a good quality image tih a good printer the process of printing shrinks each and every pixel and renders an image that looks much smoother. The human eye doesn;t resolve much beyong 300-360 dpi. That is why even though a film camera outputs something like 20 million pixels, when I print a 5x7 from even my 3 mp camera it's almost impossible to tell the difference on the print.

The botom line is that I have printed many prints from my 5050 and the image quality is superb, much much better than what Jared is showing us and much much better than what I see on my screen a 100% magnification at 72 dpi.

--
http://www.pbase.com/jfeinleib
http://www.photosig.com/viewuser.php?id=23754
 
Joel Feinleib said:
done with sharpening at 0. I would have liked to see the "noise"
test done at different levels of sharpening.
I realize this just adds to the reviewer's time burden, but it
seems pretty simple to do I'm disappointed this reveiw didn't clear
it up.
Click to expand...
But what is the optimal setting? I have read different optimal settings from different people. It's nice that the camera has this feature to allow for this but when you reduce sharpening, you're also reducing the resolution. I think that it is fair to test it at default settings because that's what Olympus feels is the optimal setting.

alan
 
Noise is always linked to resolution! To compare the noise level of two cameras (e.g. C5050 and G3) you have to adjust both to have the same resolution. Take the example photos (those with the bottles) from this website and use photoshop to reduce the resolution of the C5050 image (using gaussian blur) until it is as low as the G3 photo and is looks much better than the G3 picture.

I think the real advantage of the G3 is the 4 times zoom lens.

Jo

P.S. in technical terms, to compare noise levels of two cameras, they need to have the same spectral response. It is the same thing as with the treble control of an amplifier: if you reduce the treble, the noise is reduced simultaneously with the high frequencies of the audio signal.
C-5050 said:
James
Alfred Molon said:
Only 'Recommended'

He probably made all tests with sharpening set to 0, which would
explain the noise and the jaggies.

--

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Olympus4040_5050/
http://www.molon.de/Galleries.htm
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
On the contrary, when you reduce sharpening and contrast you're getting more detail. It may not look that way because the pictures are softer but if you sharpen a shot (taken at soft settings) in postprocessing you'll see better results in general than by letting the camera do it for you.

Regards, Maxven
Alan Wu said:
But what is the optimal setting? I have read different optimal
settings from different people. It's nice that the camera has this
feature to allow for this but when you reduce sharpening, you're
also reducing the resolution. I think that it is fair to test it
at default settings because that's what Olympus feels is the
optimal setting.

alan
Click to expand...
 
It sounds like you both agree on the reality of the situation (that the jaggies do in fact exist in the print), but Joel strongly feels that at whatever size they would actually print at it's irrelevant. I believe that printers are not confined to the same geometry limitations as monitors and a print can sometimes smooth out issues that are real problems at full screen resolution, but also believe that Jared's scan simply shows the truth that this is not the case with prints from the 5050. Is it larger on my screen when I look at his scan in Pbase than it would be in real life - yes, but it seems to me that he's just making it easy to see. In a nutshell - you're both right - the jaggies are there, but probably don't make a bit of difference at any normal print size.
-Wow
Joel Feinleib said:
Peter G said:
One thing that constantly annoys me is people who claim that
printing drastically changes the output and you can't compare
cameras without printing, that is pure BS. Everything in the image
will be reproduced in the print.
Click to expand...
More nonsense. "everything in the image will be reproduced in the
print" ONLY MUCH SMALLER. That is the whole point. What I can see
with the naked eye at 72dpi on my screen I can't see when the same
information is crammed into 1/4 the space, i.e. 300dpi.
Joel Feinleib said:
300 dpi is considered a very high quality print. Maybe it is you
who failed to realize that the area he is showing would be less
than 1 inch across on his output (less than 2 inches in the big
one). Your more realistic argument should be can anyone really see
the jaggies when they it is less than an inch across. But they are
certainly present.
Click to expand...
If I blow up a 1x1 inch area to 4x5 inches then I am sure we will
see evidence of digitization. But that is no point at all. In a
good quality image tih a good printer the process of printing
shrinks each and every pixel and renders an image that looks much
smoother. The human eye doesn;t resolve much beyong 300-360 dpi.
That is why even though a film camera outputs something like 20
million pixels, when I print a 5x7 from even my 3 mp camera it's
almost impossible to tell the difference on the print.

The botom line is that I have printed many prints from my 5050 and
the image quality is superb, much much better than what Jared is
showing us and much much better than what I see on my screen a 100%
magnification at 72 dpi.

--
http://www.pbase.com/jfeinleib
http://www.photosig.com/viewuser.php?id=23754
Click to expand...
 
Joel Feinleib said:
Peter G said:
One thing that constantly annoys me is people who claim that
printing drastically changes the output and you can't compare
cameras without printing, that is pure BS. Everything in the image
will be reproduced in the print.
Click to expand...
More nonsense. "everything in the image will be reproduced in the
print" ONLY MUCH SMALLER. That is the whole point. What I can see
with the naked eye at 72dpi on my screen I can't see when the same
information is crammed into 1/4 the space, i.e. 300dpi.
Click to expand...
Hardly nonsense as I said in the next paragraph, the argument should be is it visible? At 300dpi probably not, but at 150dpi it most likely is. Jaggies will be objectionable to some and dead giveaway of the digital nature of the prints.
Joel Feinleib said:
Joel Feinleib said:
one). Your more realistic argument should be can anyone really see
the jaggies when they it is less than an inch across. But they are
certainly present.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Joel Feinleib said:
The botom line is that I have printed many prints from my 5050 and
the image quality is superb, much much better than what Jared is
showing us and much much better than what I see on my screen a 100%
magnification at 72 dpi.
Click to expand...
Still the jaggies are present and will present a limit to large printing. That limit will be based on size of print and quality of eyesight.

Peter
 
Joel Feinleib said:
I was surprised however that Phil didn't really shed light on the
"aggressive default in-camera sharpening vs. noise" issue. He
admits that the default sharpening is too aggressive and states his
preference for a setting of -2. But it appears the noise tests are
done with sharpening at 0. I would have liked to see the "noise"
test done at different levels of sharpening. The point, as someone
mentioned above, is to see how the camera performs at it's optimal
settings. And of course if I am comparing across camera's I want to
see how they compare at their optimal settings--the mere fact that
I can adjust the settings makes the deafult limitations irrelevant.
I realize this just adds to the reviewer's time burden, but it
seems pretty simple to do I'm disappointed this reveiw didn't clear
it up.
Click to expand...
Hmmmm.....does sharpening affect the amount of noise in flat areas, such as the gray patch that Phil uses to determine noise levels? Sharpening really just increases the contrast between adjacent pixels, no? Therefore I would guess that the noise exists independantly from the sharpening level and is merely masked or amplified by the sharpening level. Just a thought.
-Wow
 
Peter G said:
Hardly nonsense as I said in the next paragraph, the argument
should be is it visible? At 300dpi probably not, but at 150dpi it
most likely is. Jaggies will be objectionable to some and dead
giveaway of the digital nature of the prints.
Click to expand...
With a 5MP camera when will you need to print at 150dpi? 5x7 is already 365 dpi; 8x10 is 256 and 11x14 is 182. And that is without resizing the image up using some sort of stair interpolation.
Peter G said:
Peter G said:
Peter G said:
one). Your more realistic argument should be can anyone really see
the jaggies when they it is less than an inch across. But they are
certainly present.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
My simple point is that for the most part the extreme details you see in 100% 72 dpi screen views have almost nothing to do with what you see in the print. I can enlarge the highest resolution digital image large enough so that I will see individual pixels. no matter what you do they are still there. But in practice at the resolutions most people prefer to look at these images they are essential invisible or should I say indistinguishable.
Peter G said:
Still the jaggies are present and will present a limit to large
printing. That limit will be based on size of print and quality of
eyesight
Click to expand...
Look, I just printed out a 10x13" image I took on my 5050 a few weeks ago. Upsampled in PS so it would print at about 300dpi. It's mostly a geometric composition, marble steps and columns, shadows, etc.. I just looked at it with a magnifying glass and I don't see one iota of jaggies or other giveaways that this is "just" a digital image. I'd be happy to sell you one :-)
http://www.pbase.com/image/10791426

The fact is that Jared is using very misleading examples. My experience--I do actually own the camera and have taken severl hundred shots and made dozens of prints--is very different, and more than satisfactory to a a fairly discriminating viewer.

--
http://www.pbase.com/jfeinleib
http://www.photosig.com/viewuser.php?id=23754
 
Joel Feinleib said:
With a 5MP camera when will you need to print at 150dpi? 5x7 is
already 365 dpi; 8x10 is 256 and 11x14 is 182. And that is without
resizing the image up using some sort of stair interpolation.
Click to expand...
If you use the 17" width of an a3 printer you will be doing 150 dpi. Not that unreasonable. Many A3 printers will do 13" x 19". I don't think stair interpolation will rid you of jaggies.
Joel Feinleib said:
My simple point is that for the most part the extreme details you
see in 100% 72 dpi screen views have almost nothing to do with what
you see in the print. I can enlarge the highest resolution digital
image large enough so that I will see individual pixels. no matter
what you do they are still there. But in practice at the
resolutions most people prefer to look at these images they are
essential invisible or should I say indistinguishable.
Click to expand...
What if you aren't most people. My next printer will be wide carriage and I want a camera that will not display artifacts in big prints. I have a friend who has a 22" x 17" picture of his dog with a mere 3mp, but one that doesn't do jaggies.
Joel Feinleib said:
etc.. I just looked at it with a magnifying glass and I don't see
one iota of jaggies or other giveaways that this is "just" a
digital image. I'd be happy to sell you one :-)
http://www.pbase.com/image/10791426
Click to expand...
Obviously the presence of jaggies will depend on the content of the original image.
Joel Feinleib said:
The fact is that Jared is using very misleading examples. My
experience--I do actually own the camera and have taken severl
hundred shots and made dozens of prints--is very different, and
more than satisfactory to a a fairly discriminating viewer.
Click to expand...
Fact 1: Jaggies are present.
Fact 2: this will at some print size become an issue.
Fact 3: At the size YOU print, YOU have no issue with them.
  1. 3 does not negate #1 and #2.
All I was ever pointing out was that printing doesn't change the character of an image. It is obvious to everyone that if you print small enough, the defects will be hidden. But printers are some magical device that keeps the good and throws out the bad.

I have been in these arguments before with different cameras. "Print it out and it doesn't show up" so to humor them I printed it out. I could still see the defect, then they start talking about proper viewing distances etc...

It is highly subjective. The bottom line. What you have on your screen is what you will get in print. Print small and it will hide defects, printer bigger and you will see them. Critical people with good eyesight will notice them sooner than others.

In the end, it is best not to have defects to worry about hiding.

Peter
 
Wow-

I think you're right that aggressive sharpening appears to simply "amplify" existing noise, and that the noise would still be there at lower sharpening levels...However, it does appear that lowering the in-camera sharpening decreases the apparent noise pretty significantly. A good example of this can be found in the review of the C-5050 at http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/olympus/c5050z-review/index.html .

My question is: If you lower the in-camera sharpening, and use the unsharp mask in post-processing, will the noise "reappear", and look like it does with the default level of in-camera sharpening? [I hope that makes sense :p]

I in no way consider myself to be an expert. I simply state what I think I've learned through the years--and a lot of what I've learned has come from you guys & gals :)
--
Kevin

*********************************************************
Olympus C-3040Z
Tiffen MegaPlus 2x teleconverter
Promaster 5750DX flash
 
Peter,

I don't mean to be argumentative, but I think you are really picking nits at this point.

When you look at at 5MP image on screen at 100% the dimensions are 35" by 26". You have no argument from me that if you print at this size what you see on the screen wil be very close to what you get from your print. If you are going to 17"x13" then look at the image on your screen at 50%. If you still have problem seeing jaggies or whatever, then you'll will indeed have a problem. But also remeber that your printer does NOT show you exactly what you see on screen. It most definitely smoothes out the image (a) because of digital filtering--why we almost always need to sharpen (1x for camera 1x for printer) (b) because the droplets (in picolitres) coming from your printer are not the same shape as the pixels on your -they are circular not square I believe) (c) if the details are too small to resolve with your eyes then it is irrelevant--the tricks your eyes play on you matter.

My bottom line is that I have taken many pictures and I rarely see the kind of jaggies Jared is huffing and puffing about. Of course many of my pictures have some sort of defect (not necesarily the camera's fault) which is why I only print the best ones. In actual practice, at fairly large print sizes I'm not seeing any defects in my printed images. If your experience is otherwise-have you tried the 5050 yet?-- then I gues you should look elsewhere. I think for most everyone else considering this camera they will not have any problems.
--
http://www.pbase.com/jfeinleib
http://www.photosig.com/viewuser.php?id=23754
 
730UZ'r said:
How can this be possible?!
2 years after...
730UZ'r
Click to expand...
--This thread is sure reminissent of the similar thread a couple of weeks ago over at the CTF re G3. Once everyone realizes it is a very good review and that score pride does very little to produce better pictures they will calm down and start proving the camera is excellent. The scores that Phil attaches to these reviews are IMO highly subjective and in the final analysis mean very little. All the 5050 owners that have been using the camera have made their own assessments by now without the influence of this review. The empirical information in the reviews is very interesting & helpful but the scores IMO are next to irrelevant. I had a very difficult time making my decision to purchase the G3 and not the C-5050. It was based on personal uses and issues that I felt were important. I look with envy at some of the things the C-5050 has and I know the cam can do things the G3 can't. If I could afford to buy both units I would have or else a much more expensiver DSLR camera. But I had to make a decision just like 95% of the people here. I say use the review info for helpful information only. Judging by the quantity of people short listing the C-5050 real life indications are HIGHLY RECOMMENED cam.

Sorry for the unintended didactic rant

Cheers
Gheth
 
Joel Feinleib said:
Peter,
I don't mean to be argumentative, but I think you are really
picking nits at this point.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it is one of those kind of days. :-) I am not taking this too seriously as I am just pointing out the merits of the other side of the argument as I pass through.
Joel Feinleib said:
When you look at at 5MP image on screen at 100% the dimensions are
35" by 26". You have no argument from me that if you print at this
Click to expand...
22"x17" on my screen running at 112 dpi BTW.
Joel Feinleib said:
size what you see on the screen wil be very close to what you get
from your print. If you are going to 17"x13" then look at the image
on your screen at 50%. If you still have problem seeing jaggies or
whatever, then you'll will indeed have a problem. But also remeber
that your printer does NOT show you exactly what you see on screen.
It most definitely smoothes out the image (a) because of digital
Click to expand...
Strongly dissagree here. A 5MP 17x13 print will reveal more defects than a half size screen image. If you mean half dimension (1280x960), you just threw away 3/4 of the data. While the print contains it all and is capable of revealing it all at that size.
Joel Feinleib said:
In actual
practice, at fairly large print sizes I'm not seeing any defects in
my printed images. If your experience is otherwise-have you tried
the 5050 yet?-- then I gues you should look elsewhere. I think for
most everyone else considering this camera they will not have any
problems.
Click to expand...
I am waiting (again) to see if PMA brings something interesting, but much like Jared, I don't like cameras that reveal defects at 100% size. It may not be much of a practical limitation, but there alternatives without this issue and I personally would explore those first to satisfy my nitpicky personality. :-)

One of my favorite consumer bodies is the Fuji 602, but I can't buy it, because it has artifacts that are clearly visible at A3 size prints that annoy me.

Peter
 
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