DP1M v Panasonic DMC-GH1 (Siemens Star Target)

I tried to compare micro-contrast using a 144-cycle sinusoidal Siemens Star target created by the well-respected Bart van der Wolf. The test failed, mainly because the GH1 shot had low global contrast, no idea why. Still, the following might be of interest as regards the never-ending Foveon vs Bayer thing. In fact, my main reason for shooting Foveon is illustrated quite well!

With the Siemens target we pay attention to the center area:

Best viewed "original"

The regions of interest are outlined in red. The color moiré of the Bayer pattern jumps off the screen at you, does it not? One wonders how one of Tom's 1/4-size Fuji shots would fare but for me, the GH1 becomes a holiday snaps machine right there ...

On each side there is a monochrome pattern in the middle and the same - that pattern is due to a Nyquist effect in the target itself and is not helpful when trying to compare camera shots. Please ignore it.

Being unable to visually compare micro-contrast, I switched to the good old slant-edge method which yielded a little surprise:

Please ignore the channel curves and concentrate on the black curves

At top, we see that the GH1 is sharper than the DP1M, in spite of an SPP sharpness setting of 0.0 !!

At bottom, the MTF curve reflects that, showing a bit more contrast in the mid-frequencies. Please bear in mind that this is a one-off test of two individual cameras - statistically meaningless.

Having said that, the Bayer was totally defeated by the detail:

The proof of the pudding is in the detail