Mikedigi
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No contest. Don't sell the 70D. You've almost got me looking for a DSLR on Ebay.
Mike
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FZ330 early experience – Introduction and Contents
- Thread starter gardenersassistant
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gardenersassistant
Veteran Member
I have now.No contest. Don't sell the 70D. You've almost got me looking for a DSLR on Ebay.
Numbers are rounded in what follows.
Yesterday I had a quick run through the 1600 FZ330 captures and 800 70D captures. In both cases this was my very fast first cut "reject the obvious rubbish" run. I think I probably average somewhere between 1 and 2 seconds per image. I mark up the ones that aren't immediately, obviously not usable, and then transfer them to another directory to work on. I selected 600 of the 1600 FZ330 images and 300 of the 800 70D images. I did not deliberately choose the same proportion for each camera. It just came out that way.
The initial purpose of the exercise was to see if I was being unfair in criticising the FZ330 for the focus problems I was having with it - images with soft focus on the subject and images which were completely out of focus. I wasn't counting during the first cut run, but I got the rather surprising (to me) impression that the 70D focus issues were at least as bad as those of the FZ330, and possibly worse.
I had the 70D set for slow burst, around 3fps I think. This means I can use single shots, which I generally prefer, or a modest burst, the slowness of which stops the 13 shot raw buffer filling up quite as quickly as with the 7 fps burst.
I have put four examples of the 70D focusing issues in this album at Flickr. The first example is a sequence of 11 consecutive shots of the same subject shot in five seconds. The first 10 are grossly out of focus. The final one is in focus, just before I lost track of the bird. The second example is six shots in three seconds. The first four are soft. The last two are in focus but the bird was by then too small in the frame to give a useful image. The third example is 20 images captured over 9 seconds. In the first 18 the subject is either too soft to be usable or grossly out of focus. The fourth example only has two images, and in both cases the subject is far too soft to be useful.
I then put the 900 first cut images through the DXO and Silkypix batch process. I then went through them picking the ones I thought might be ok, doing image-specific adjustments as I went. This included cropping by whatever amount I thought suitable to produce an image I liked the look of. That varied from not much to quite a lot of cropping, for both cameras. Also for both cameras I used Nik Dfine in some cases to reverse the side effects of Silkypix sharpening on plain areas especially in the more cropped images.
After the usual winnowing procedure I ended up with 81 images from the 70D and 45 from the FZ330. The 70D images are in this album and the FZ330 images are in this album at Flickr, all 1300 pixels high as usual. So I kept about 10% for the 70D and about 3% for the FZ330.
Now we need to be careful not to read too much into these numbers as I think the opportunities were better for the 70D. But I don't think they were that much better. It is very noticeable that over half of the FZ330 images that I kept are of birds that were in a relatively fixed position. In contrast, most of the 70D images are of birds moving laterally and/or towards me, including some rather difficult shots of pigeons in flight. There are not many of them at these sites and they rarely take to the wing. When they do they present a small and fast moving target for a very brief period. This is the first shot of a sequence of 7 captured over three seconds, of which I kept 6. It was close to me at this point so the angular velocity was large.
The pigeons provided two of the shots I liked best. I saw it coming in towards me but failed to align on it while it was in flight. However, I just got the camera on it as it came into land, which gave me these two shots. Given the zooming speed issue, I don't think I could have captured these with the FZ330.
The 70D also handled shots of birds against complicated backgrounds better. The FZ330 seems to get shots like these wrong a lot, focusing on the background with the bird too soft to use.
I think the FZ330 picks up on whatever has the strongest contrast in the area(s) it is looking at. I was using single area focusing with the FZ330, using the fourth or fifth largest of the FZ330's eight size options for the focusing box. I spent a long time trying different focus box sizes with this bird, which conveniently stayed there for quite a while. I could only gain focus if I used the smallest or next sized focus box, so the box was entirely inside the outline of the bird. If I used a larger box and any of the box was outside that outline the camera insisted on focusing on the background.
Then there is the issue of image quality. That is a bit of an aside I think, because the 70D has a sensor 10 times the area of the FZ330, so you would expect it to be better. I think that is reflected in the images I kept from the two cameras. I felt a lot of the FZ330 images that I kept for this exercise were not of a quality that I would feel comfortable posting as they seemed to lack clarity and detail. The 70D images were not of the highest quality, but I felt that I would feel less uncomfortable about posting them. And there were several that I quite liked (although that is partly an opportunity issue of course, and liking them isn't an issue of image quality, beyond a certain baseline of - for my taste - acceptable image quality).
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Nick
gardenersassistant's collections on Flickr
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So true, gardenersassistant, so true. When I was buying me a Fuji's HS50EXR I was in doubts whether to buy that Fuji or maybe Canon's SX50 HS. I decided for the Fuji and I was never sorry. Motorized zooms just aren't fast enough when pulling zoom back. On the other hand, Fuji's zoom is splendidly swift.No contest. Don't sell the 70D. You've almost got me looking for a DSLR on Ebay.
Mike
It's just a pity Fuji hasn't pursued the development of the HS50EXR into a model with 1-inch sensor. Even with the shorter FL.
Mikedigi
Forum Pro
This reads as if the HS50EXR has a manual zoom, but the specs in DPR say electronic?
Mike
Mikedigi
Forum Pro
I love the shots of the pigeon landing.
Wow, that is really bad and a really basic focus problem. It is especially worrying because this bird was not even moving! In fact I thought focussing on the wrong thing would be cured by using one-area AF not Multi-Area.
I must try this with my FZ200 and see what it does.
That is the only surprise for me. Obviously I was expecting the 70D's OVF+Manual zoom combination to be far more enjoyable and effective than the FZ330's EVF+Power zoom system, and the 70D IQ to beat the FZ330 IQ easily.
I did look at Ebay, there was a D90 with nice 18-105 VR and only 5000 clicks for £269, and I confess I was tempted and spent 3 hours putting this idea aside . . . . I would not have kept it for long, I know myself so well.
Mike
gardenersassistant
Veteran Member
So true, gardenersassistant, so true. When I was buying me a Fuji's HS50EXR I was in doubts whether to buy that Fuji or maybe Canon's SX50 HS. I decided for the Fuji and I was never sorry. Motorized zooms just aren't fast enough when pulling zoom back. On the other hand, Fuji's zoom is splendidly swift.No contest. Don't sell the 70D. You've almost got me looking for a DSLR on Ebay.
Mike
It's just a pity Fuji hasn't pursued the development of the HS50EXR into a model with 1-inch sensor. Even with the shorter FL.
gardenersassistant
Veteran Member
Yes, it was shocking. A huge and unwelcome surprise.
Just as well you do.
Mike
gardenersassistant
Veteran Member
"twist-barrel manual zoom and focusing controls" according to the photographyblog review. Fly by wire or mechanical I wonder.
Mikedigi
Forum Pro
Re HS50EXR - sorry, you're right, I was looking at the EVF and assuming that an EVF has to have power zoom, which of course it doesn't.
I suspect "Fly by wire", surely a pure mechanical zoom would have been trumpeted from the rooftops.
Neither DPR nor Cameralab took any interest in this camera, which is astonishing, given the combination of (allegedly) very fast zoom control and 24-1000 mm, with a 1/2" sensor. Weird, isn't it????
Also weird that there are none on Ebay and only one used one on Amazon.
Mike
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kkardster
Forum Pro
24-1000mm zoom, phase-detect AF, and I believe the HS50 EXR truly is a manual zoom - not a fly-by-wire like the FZ1000 ring zoom control. The HS50's specs still look good today, 3 years later.
Wouldn't if be great if we could get dual-mode zooms on today's bridge cameras? It's been done before and would make the newer video-centric models more attractive to stills shooters.
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Bruce
You learn something new every time you press the shutter
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gardenersassistant
Veteran Member
I would have thought so.
Yes, very odd. Had I known about it I might well have tried it.
Not many sold? The reason for it not being developed I assume.
gardenersassistant
Veteran Member
They do indeed.
Nice thought. Don't think I'll hold my breath though.
Mikedigi
Forum Pro
By manual zoom in HS50EXR I meant manual-control zoom lens barrel which enables much more precise and faster control.
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Mikedigi
Forum Pro
Yes but is the lens zoom system directly mechanical, like a DSLR zoom lens, or does the "manual" zoom ring control an electric motor that drives the zoom, = fly-by-wire ???
Thanks,
Mike
All I know is that the lens is controlled manually, by the twist of the extendable lens barrel, which is much like with a DSLR lens. To be frank, I have never gone for some cross-section, in-depth analysis or something similar regarding the built-in mechanism. ;-)
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Mikedigi
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gardenersassistant
Veteran Member
I've managed to reproduce some of this behaviour in a test environment. The particulars of the behaviour varied from run to run, but yes, I think it happens in AFS, AFF and AFC. Here is one example.
Here is the test setup. The target is on top of the back of the chair at the centre left of the image.
The following images show what is on the FZ330 screen after the shutter button has been half pressed.
First, with the smallest focus box. That's fine.
There are 8 focus box sizes on the FZ330. I'll count from 1 for the smallest. I increase the focus box size by 1 and try again. Everything is fine up to size 6.
Then at size 7, it flips.
And stays that way at size 8.
I go back down through the sizes. At size 3 it is still focusing on the background.
It doesn't flip back on to the subject until size 2.
This was unusual in the sense that it was usually ok all the way from 1 to 8 and I then had to force it to focus on the background and then run down through the sizes and it would stay focused on the background until size 4 or 3.
Here is an example at full zoom. First focus on the subject.
Then move the focus box to focus on the background.
Then move the focus box back on to the subject. It is still focused on the background.
I have the impression that the focusing is biased towards the last distance/area it was focused on, although that wouldn't explain the flip at size 7 in the first example, which is the sort of thing I was getting with the seagull.
By the way, it isn't that it gets the focusing wrong but if you try again it gets it right. It gets "stuck" and once it has failed repeated attempts fail. Mostly. But occasionally it flips back again. It is not consistent.
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Nick
gardenersassistant's collections on Flickr
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Mikedigi
Forum Pro
Hmmmm, low contrast subject, high contrast background - but you would think it would focus on the boundary line between the two.
Focus on something nearer first, then swing onto subject?
Repeat with FZ200 and 70D?
Mike
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gardenersassistant
Veteran Member
Yes, I would have thought so. Apparently not though.
If you've got time to do that then I think you've got time to half press and check that the focusing is where you want it. No good for BIF of course, e.g. the ones I had trouble with, with the FZ330, of low contrast bird in front of higher contrast background, which the 70D did much better with.
I have to go and do some useful things now, but yes, I expect so.
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