Re: Tom Verrinder Re: SX50 vs. SX60 - My thoughts. What About SX70 Thoughts?
John McCormack wrote:
Tom Verrinder wrote:
I shot 50,000 images with my SX 50, and have so far shot about 2000 on the SX 70 over two weekends (we are birders, so IQ is all important).
My summary so far: the SX 70 is by far the better camera to shoot, with a far better autofocus, continuous drive, and buffering (among other bells and whistles). It just leads to a much smoother shooting experience.
However, the RAW images from the SX 70 processed as best I can using DPP are often worse in terms of IQ than the S00C JPEGs that the SX 50 could produce. With a little bit of postprocessing, the SX 50 JPEGs can be exceptional. I have produced exactly one truly good picture of a bird with the SX 70. I have even resorted to shooting videos of birds in 4K and taking still captures from the videos, which often turn out better than the still pictures the same camera produces.
Needless to say, I am very disappointed with the newer camera.
Wow. Are you sure you didn't get a bad copy of the SX70? We see so many good images from posters in this thread it makes me suspicious of the build quality of your particular camera. Have you done targeting tests at various apertures and focal lengths?
One of the easiest birds to photograph at this time of year in our neck of the woods are immature Swainson's Hawks. They are slow-moving and fairly tolerant of close human proximity. This guy was sitting completely still on a fence post 20 feet from the car, which was turned off. I took about 100 photographs of him, all using the RAW setting, before he flew away.
I've attached two JPEG's, one of which was produced by DPP with absolutely no editing and the second which was sharpened in DPP and edited for cover, exposure, levels, and a final late sharpening in Paint.net.
For such a big, stationary target, I would have expected much, much greater quality than this, and would have achieved that quality with the SX 50.
The only technical drawbacks that I can see to this picture is that it was shot at ISO 200 - which nevertheless should have produced a good image.

