WB150 review.

Through a combination of eBay and forgetfulness, I own three identical copies of the Samsung WB150 - save that one has WiFi - and is white, not black!

I am therefore in a position to compare the image quality between individual examples of the same camera make and model - something I have not seen done before.

My method was simple, if crude: take shots at both extremes of the lens range, using a low ISO setting (100), and with the aperture set to f4.5, since that seems to be 'as good as it gets'.

I then placed the cameras on a table, set the self-timer and allowed them to take two pictures of the scene before them - that of a house wall, some 80m or so away - one at the widest and one at the longest lens settings.

The image files were saved at 'best JPEG' settings and then viewed, unchanged, on a decent 23" monitor at 100% crop.

There proved to be considerable variation between the three WB150 cameras, with the sharpest proving to be at least as good as a brand-new Panasonic FZ1000 and considerably better than a Fuji FinepixF100FS (which was roughly the same as the worst WB150).

Now, the FZ1000 can do a lot of things very much better than even the best little WB150 can - but NOT take sharper pictures under normal daylight conditions (100% overcast grey cloud, to ensure constant lighting throughout my test), and that's true whether used at wide angle or telephoto (~400mm) settings.

This result is NOT what I expected!  I post it here just to show everyone - from pixel-peepers to casual snappers - that the best image quality depends on a great deal more than buying an example of a  top-rated camera on here (and elsewhere), BUT ALSO getting a particular individual camera which is at, or near, the the upper reaches of their quality control curve (as I assume all examples of each model sent out for review are selected to be!)