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.
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).
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
-> ;l]
