SD Quattro H vs SD1 Merrill

O.K. This is a bit of a rough test, because I have no color checker and no strobes, and my "test board" is just made with stuff I found around the house, using double-sided tape, Elmer's glue, and a hot glue gun, which I found while in the process of making the board.

I'll start with a couple of OOC jpegs shot at ISO 100:

Both of the cameras were set to 1 second exposure at f5.6 with ISO 100 and Daylight white balance (the little sun icon). The light COULD have changed, because I was relying on daylight coming into the room from the windows, which is probably why the second shot appears so much warmer. That could be partly because of the camera being a Merrill instead of a Quattro though. Let's not worry so much about the color though and concentrate on the details and noise levels.

Here are some the same images developed from raw files with SPP, with some adjustments to the white balance (middle sharpness for Quattro and -1.0 for Merrill):

SD Quattro H at ISO 100

SD1 Merrill at ISO 100

White balance was corrected (somewhat) in the SD1 Merrill raw image above.

I think the SD Quattro H wins this battle.

And here is the ISO 400 set (with some noise reduction):

SD Quattro H at ISO 400

SD1 Merrill at ISO 400

Do you think the SD Quattro H wins this battle too?

Here's the ISO 1600 set (more noise reduction):

SD Quattro H at ISO 1600

SD1 Merrill at ISO 1600

I like it! I think that's a bit better than the OOC jpegs that follow below:

SD Quattro H at ISO 1600 - OOC jpeg

SD1 Merrill at ISO 1600 - OOC jpeg

I know someone is going to say something like, "You didn't sharpen them right!" That's true. I have done very little post work on these, and surely the images can look more detailed. I have decided to avoid a bunch of post-processing effort, because inevitably what I do to the images will be "wrong" in someone's eyes.