HS20, 30, or the 50 ?

painterdude said:

painterdude wrote:

welp I am only asking about IQ just now. I think the HS50 shares its sensor with F770 . which shows a similar look . Here's one of my shots with my F770. Just as nasty and at a lower ISO -100! The color here is way messed up and the image is less than sharp..

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As a new user of a Fuji HS50 myself (moving down from 7 years of DSLrs), I have to ask what you think is wrong with that image?

To me, as someone who is a little 'purist' about photos (i.e. I want them to look like the original scene), the image you posted here seems to be quite natural looking, and reasonably sharp and well detailed.

However, I am looking at it on a calibrated monitor (modestly calibrated with a Spider2Express), and many of the images I see on this forum with comments of 'beautiful colours' etc, seem to me to be over saturated and have bleeding colours all over the place.

I wonder how many users here are using a good setup. Unless you're using similar systems, commenting on images posted via web, which as such are already losing detail. Without using a similar way to reference what you see, such comparisons are never going to be accurate.

Even then you can calibrate two monitors with the same system, and see different results.

On my system, I am comparing the HS50 images with DSLR images, using Olympus bodies (with well renowned colour reproduction, and very well regarded lenses (including their legendary 14-54).

Putting the machinery into context - i.e. a £2000 body +£800 lens versus a £400 complete camera - there's no doubt that the HS50 represents an extremely good all round camera at a very good price for the images it produces.

In my comparisons so far, I'm not disappointed at all with my decision to buy the HS50.

If you think that image from Painterdude is OK you're an easy man to please and deserve the HS50. As to your Olympus gear, you can buy an E520 + 14-54mm for less than the price of an HS50, I know because I've brought quite a few on e-bay for around £300.

thanks Dave ..I see the shot comparo was @150 mm for that macro. Can't you walk the HS50 up to the target at a smaller zoom ??

As to the rest re the HS 50 ..a lack of CA= a good thing in my books. Hate seeing it in any shot though its easy to remove in LR.

Thanks for your comments.

all the best

g

humm..I would have to agree with Paul. The image is a mess..as are most of my F770 shots. As per your comments on monitors. I calibrated mine..and I guess people can be seeing different things re color/contrast ..but if you have a decent monitor I would think sharpness will show or not, relatively speaking, no matter if you got everything else screwed.

To add some perspective .. or perhaps better ..to acknowledge the elephant in the room ..most stuff from any cam viewed at screen size or printed to 8X10 can look about the same re sharpness. Its only to the 100% and above pixel peepers or extreme image choppers that the differences start to show. I chop stuff a lot so sharpness does matter somewhat to me and besides, its always nice to have the most of any good quality for the coin, in any cam you buy.

As to history with cams..I started shooting for my work ..in 1976. There have been a LOT of cameras through the years from the film days on through to the digital age. My best bridge cam so far has been the C8080 Olympus..It was something of a bear to use but simply better IQ wise than anything after.

My main squeeze now is the D800E which I presently am building a better lens collection for. That =$$ but wooooo..worth it.

I need to up grade my walk around zoomer p&s which is the F770 for now .. hence my questions here re the HS series..I may jump ship and go Canon or Nikon..Shall see. Been kicking this can for a while now .

all the best

g

http://skylightvistas.weebly.com/index.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/69422935@N00/

kind of amazed at your camera buying. You have gone through a lot of cameras!
You need to start a web blog and chronicle your findings..Wait .....

you do already ..

HERE..lol

all the best

g

http://skylightvistas.weebly.com/index.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/69422935@N00/

painterdude said:

painterdude wrote:

kind of amazed at your camera buying. You have gone through a lot of cameras!
You need to start a web blog and chronicle your findings..Wait .....

you do already ..

HERE..lol

all the best

g

http://skylightvistas.weebly.com/index.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/69422935@N00/

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I buy to sell to fund what I use. I've over £2000 worth of gear and it hasn't cost me a penny, fellow e-bayers have paid for it.

PAUL TILL said:

PAUL TILL wrote:
I buy to sell to fund what I use. I've over £2000 worth of gear and it hasn't cost me a penny, fellow e-bayers have paid for it.

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Any comment I might make on that is negated by your generous offer to a forum member of batteries and which pinned the pointer on my you-are-a-gentleman-and-a-scholar O meter!

painterdude said:

painterdude wrote:

400 or 100 good light or not so good ..small sensors show their weakness the greater the WA ..Just the way it is.

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Regardless of WA, there is a significant difference in image quality on these cameras b/w ISO 100 & ISO 400. ISO 400 is sometimes acceptable, but if I can get ISO 200 or lower, I aim for that.

RAW processing might give better results with ISO 400

PAUL TILL said:

PAUL TILL wrote:

If you think that image from Painterdude is OK you're an easy man to please and deserve the HS50. As to your Olympus gear, you can buy an E520 + 14-54mm for less than the price of an HS50, I know because I've brought quite a few on e-bay for around £300.

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Yes I know, I just sold all my gear. I was comparing the new costs, and just indicating that I have a higher benchmark. I actually paid £349 for my HS50.

painterdude said:

painterdude wrote:

humm..I would have to agree with Paul. The image is a mess..as are most of my F770 shots. As per your comments on monitors. I calibrated mine..and I guess people can be seeing different things re color/contrast ..but if you have a decent monitor I would think sharpness will show or not, relatively speaking, no matter if you got everything else screwed.

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Possibly.

painterdude said:

To add some perspective .. or perhaps better ..to acknowledge the elephant in the room ..most stuff from any cam viewed at screen size or printed to 8X10 can look about the same re sharpness. Its only to the 100% and above pixel peepers or extreme image choppers that the differences start to show. I chop stuff a lot so sharpness does matter somewhat to me and besides, its always nice to have the most of any good quality for the coin, in any cam you buy.

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I must admit that I have been a 'pixel peeper' to some extent, although I have also changed a lot to finding other aspects of photography more important - such as the overall image you see in the format in which you’re viewing it.

painterdude said:

As to history with cams..I started shooting for my work ..in 1976. There have been a LOT of cameras through the years from the film days on through to the digital age. My best bridge cam so far has been the C8080 Olympus..It was something of a bear to use but simply better IQ wise than anything after.

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Aye, the earlier Olympus cameras were lovely things - I started with a 1.3MP C960, which actually took really good images at the time.

painterdude said:

My main squeeze now is the D800E which I presently am building a better lens collection for. That =$$ but wooooo..worth it.

I need to up grade my walk around zoomer p&s which is the F770 for now .. hence my questions here re the HS series..I may jump ship and go Canon or Nikon..Shall see. Been kicking this can for a while now .

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I was looking at both Canon and Nikon, as well as the Sony range, but they all seem to be dropping Raw format, so for me it came down to the Fuji or Panasonic.

painterdude said:

all the best

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And you.

On any cam using the lowest ISO for any given light is generally a good rule of thumb .. I shot my C8080 for years @ 50-80 ISO max. It had a fast lens so things worked pretty well.

Here's one of my old C8080 shots









That said, I have shot my FF @ 5000 ISO with less issues than shooting any of the bridge cams I have had @ 400-800 ISO. Here's one example. It is not super sharp as I was not using top glass nor a tripod but for a people shot the level of blur is acceptable .Too sharp and things get weird looking:



So anyways ..its an apples to watermelon comparison. Bridge cams are what they are; scaled down, cheaper photographic tools, that are simply only so capable..but then often they are capable enough!

g

--
http://skylightvistas.weebly.com/index.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/69422935@N00/

dunno how much you can do with a RAW shot that beats the jpeg engine in these small sensor cams. Prolly just me but I have not had much success trying the RAW route but then I use a pretty basic RAW converter. Lazy??

Panny is a darn good option. The FZ200 looks great and shoots great..BUT I have always had an issue with their way warm weird colors. The Nikon P 510 and possibly the P 520 are good.The Canon SX50 has shown some pretty stellar results..Dunno about the recent SX510.

The Fuji has them all beat in ergos ..and possibly color. Sony ?? humm..the super duper zoomer they have DSC-HX300 is well...not so much from the stuff I have seen. None have great EVFs

anyways ..

onwards..Much work to do

g

painterdude said:

painterdude wrote:

dunno how much you can do with a RAW shot that beats the jpeg engine in these small sensor cams. Prolly just me but I have not had much success trying the RAW route but then I use a pretty basic RAW converter. Lazy??

Panny is a darn good option. The FZ200 looks great and shoots great..BUT I have always had an issue with their way warm weird colors. The Nikon P 510 and possibly the P 520 are good.The Canon SX50 has shown some pretty stellar results..Dunno about the recent SX510.

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The P510 and P520 images appear to be identical. They both pull in as much detail at 1000mm as the SX50 does at 1200mm, but the SX50's IQ is worse due to appreciable CA in high contrast areas.

More comparisons: The P520 and SX50 have nice tilt/swivel LCDs, the P510 only tilts. The SX50 zooms very quickly, has a hot shoe and can also shoot RAW while the two Ps zoom slower, don't have hot shoes and are JPEG only. The P510 is the best value since it's generally available as a much cheaper refurb. and it doesn't sacrifice any image quality.

The Ps use the ancient but small EN-EL5 battery that's used in a gazillion Nikon P&S cameras and can be very inexpensive from internet dealers. The SX50 uses a larger NB-10L battery and while it looks a lot like some of my other Canon batteries, it's not compatible with any of them.

.

painterdude said:

The Fuji has them all beat in ergos ..and possibly color. Sony ?? humm..the super duper zoomer they have DSC-HX300 is well...not so much from the stuff I have seen. None have great EVFs

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Neither the SX50 nor the P's have EVFs that make me want to dance for joy, throw up my hands and shout. The HS50's is much better, but unfortunately it has a resolution compromised small EXR sensor. My FAS is on hold until I see what replaces the HS-50 and XS-1, and I'll give them a look only because they'll probably have good Fuji color, but I'll leave it to others to pay to be Fuji's beta testers.

The hope has been that Fuji would continue to up the IQ with its cams..I think everyone was waiting for something spectacular as a follow on to the S100fs ..but alas we got a step down to the S200EXR..a camera that looked like a cheap re tool of the S100fs.

The great cams seem to pop out of the blue for no apparent reason ..fizzle in sales and are discontinued with no heirs.The R1 in Sony was a good example of that.


I am not holding my breath hoping that Fuji will up its game in what follows the X-S1 or the HS series.Things are getting rough out there for p&s sales and it will be interesting to see where that pushes manufactures with bridge cams ..besides out of business!

painterdude said:

painterdude wrote:

dunno how much you can do with a RAW shot that beats the jpeg engine in these small sensor cams. Prolly just me but I have not had much success trying the RAW route but then I use a pretty basic RAW converter. Lazy??

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I'm just used to working with Raw, have done it ever since I got a DSLR. I'm finding that I can apply my own levels of sharpenss, NR and saturation using Lightroom. It also seems that this one needs some tinkering with white balance too - it generally shoots a little on the 'cold' side for my liking.

painterdude said:

Panny is a darn good option. The FZ200 looks great and shoots great..BUT I have always had an issue with their way warm weird colors. The Nikon P 510 and possibly the P 520 are good.The Canon SX50 has shown some pretty stellar results..Dunno about the recent SX510.

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I almost considered the Canon, but it does have a slower lens (f3.4 against f2.8). The Nikons don't have Raw at all, but otherwise would have been a possibility.

As for the Panny, it was simply down to the manual vs motorised zoom. Having only used manual zoom for the last few years, that one it over for the Fuji.

painterdude said:

The Fuji has them all beat in ergos ..and possibly color. Sony ?? humm..the super duper zoomer they have DSC-HX300 is well...not so much from the stuff I have seen. None have great EVFs

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The ergos got it too, for my hands the HS50 is just perfect, and fits as well as any DSLR I've tried.

I understand all that, and I think you're missing the point. I merely meant to say that Joms' setting will not save the photo that was given as an example of poor IQ for an HS50.

If you're saying that nothing would save that shot, then you're probably right, depending on wind, for instance, but I personally might still give it a go with a tripod and ISO 100. These cameras can take half-decent photos in low light, under the right conditions -- certainly better than what was on display in that photo. I've done okay, Letkeman has photographed Saturn w/its rings, and there are plenty of others. As long as you accept that it's a tool with certain tradeoffs, you're fine.

Incidentally, I loved the photo of the dancers; if you consider that a less-than-ideal shot... wow. I can't afford that camera, period, so I have to settle for stuff produced by the Adv Pro Low-Light mode, which isn't bad, but isn't anywhere near that quality.

I hear what you are sayin ..but @ WA I simply have not seen anything much from pinhead superzooms that is great no matter what the darn setting. Its a matter of picking the best from a poor lot..but that's to be expected. Heck one lens to do everything ?? Something has to give and it seems its the W Angle IQ.

Thanks for the kind words on the dancers shot. Obviously a totally serendipitous get re subject and pose. Given the size of the image ..only a huge print is going to show what I can see @ 100% viewing.

anywho..all the best bro

g

hey there Andy..

Well I shoot only RAW with my DSLR s now ..but not in any other cams.

One note however on what you said. You mention that you add sharpening in your pp ing. I have never ever found pping added sharpening was better than adding sharpening in camera. My sharpening in pping always looks nasty - it adds crap rather than clarifies anything so I rarely use it .I most often simply work on dumbing down any luminance noise or color aberrations and adding in some of Light rooms "clarity".

All the best

g

--
http://skylightvistas.weebly.com/index.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/69422935@N00/

painterdude said:

painterdude wrote:

I hear what you are sayin ..but @ WA I simply have not seen anything much from pinhead superzooms that is great no matter what the darn setting. Its a matter of picking the best from a poor lot..but that's to be expected. Heck one lens to do everything ?? Something has to give and it seems its the W Angle IQ.

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Much smaller than the XS-1 or any of the HS EXR cams are Nikon's 1-Series cameras, such as the J1, V1, V2, etc. The have larger sensors too, better low light performance and what high ISO noise they have is the more pleasant film-like luminance (B&W) noise, not the ugly multi-colored chroma noise.

With the excellent 6.7-13mm lens (18-35mm equivalent that also has VR stabilization) it's uniformly sharp from corner to corner and fine, low contrast details don't get smudged away like Fuji loves to do. Any of Nikon's 16mp, 24mp or 36mp FX DSLRs with one of the f/2.8 WA Nikkors produce cleaner, higher resolution photos, but for a size that's smaller than the HS10, shoots better WA photos than the XS-1 and is only slightly more expensive than a new XS-1 (comparing a new 6.7-13mm lens + refurb/used J1 or V1). These little cameras have much better stabilization than any of Fuji's bridge cameras and they shoot RAW+JPEG several times faster than Nikon's D3s / D4, not that speed is needed for landscapes. The V1 also uses the same battery as your D800. Hmm.

LOL hummm..indeed..You know Bill who used to be on here a lot, spoke highly of those little cams . Thanks for referencing them again. Perhaps an option.

All the best bro

g