Comparing the F11 to a DSLR
Feb 3, 2006
Okay, let's compare apples with oranges
I was very curious how my new F11 compared to my DSLR, a Pentax Ds. Does the F11 really deliver "DSLR like" picture quality as sometimes is said? Well, I wanted to find out.
For this I made a rather unscientific test. I just tried to make approx. the same pics with the F11 and with my Pentax Ds at the same focal length. And I concentrated on brightly lit subjects to photograph, so that the cameras in their respective "P" mode could choose their lowest ISOs, an aperture one or two stops closed to assure best possible sharpness and a shutter speed high enough to avoid blurring due to handshake (all above 1/250). And to make the testing conditions not too difficult for the F11 for a first run I only compared the F11's performance at wide angle and a "normal" focal length - 36 and 50mm in film terms.
WB and exposure accuracy was not topic of this "test", nothing but sharpness and resolution under good light conditions was.
Since I didn't want to do a fair comparison but one of highest possible quality I used best quality settings with both cams - with the F11 that was fine mode (highest quality JPG), with the Ds RAW in conjunction with ACR 3.3 development. The Ds pics are sharpened by the default settings in ACR 3.3. (which is not much ...), the F11 jpgs sharpened by the default settings in camera (stronger sharpening).
Okay, let's start with this scene:

On the left we have the F11 at approx. 10mm - on the right the Pentax Ds with the FA35/2.0, a high quality 35mm prime lens. Both focal lengths equal approx. 50mm in standard (35mm equiv.) terms. We see on top the whole scene, below that a 200% enlargement of the upper left of the pics, followed by two 100% crops of the right part of the picture - windows of a building and the back of a car.
The 200% enlargment of the upper left shows that the chromatic aberrations are pretty prominent in the F11 - but only if enlarged. Compare it with the back of the car on the lower right at 100%: it shows - if one looks closely - also more CA in the F11 pic compared to the Ds one, but it's not really that visible at 100%. Overall sharpness and resolution of the F11 is very good here, and it rivals that of the Ds pics - which are, to remind you, sharpened much less.
The next pair are two 100% crops of approx. the same scene, taken out of the middle of the pictures. This time they were taken at maxium wide angle with the F11 (left side) and on th Ds side (right) with a DA16-45 (high quality wide angle zoom lens) at 24mm, both giving approx. the same focal length of about 36mm in 35mm-film terms. He were have some sharpening halos visible in the F11 pics if you look closely at the tram wires against the sky and some minor CA if you look at the print of the tram station's sign. Again the resolution of the the F11 is very good:

Now again a comparison at approx. 50mm "normal" focal length, that means around 10mm with the F11 and a 35mm prime with the Pentax - but this time in portrait orientation. The whole pic on top, the upper left corner at 100% below, the lower right corner at 100% in the last row. As usual you see the F11 on the left, the Ds on the right:

The upper left corner shows some unsharpness in the F11 pic due to CA that is rather noticeable here - but the lower right shows with the branches visibles there that it really is not that bad. Due to the stronger in camera sharpening the lower right corner F11 pic looks even sharper then the Pentax one.
As a last comparison again the F11 at wide angle (on the left) against the Ds with DA16-45 at 24mm (on the right) and with a central 100% crop. This crop lends itself very well to the in camera sharpening of the F11, so we have a very favorable comparison for the F11 here (but again be reminded that the RAW pic of the Pentax is designed for further PP work including sharpening):

All in all I was quite satisfied with the results of that comparison - IMO the F11 shows good quality, edge to edge sharpness and high resolution in bright light conditions and at low ISOs - using normal to wide focal lengths. CA is a problem, but then again at normal enlargement sizes not. Again I'd like to stress that I didn't do a scientific test - I just wanted to know if the F11 would be a usable carry around companion that can produce good enough pics that can be paired with those made with my DSLR.
One last thought: It really would be very nice to have a RAW mode in a F12 or so - the JPGs artifacts created don't show up in 100% crops, but if you do some pixel peeping you see how much smoother and better suited for PP work an uncompressed RAW version is - look at the last row of this comparison, again the F11 on the left, the Pentax on the right - it shows 300% enlargemnents:

Everybody is of course invited to draw his own conclusions from this unscientific comparison.
If I find the time I'll make follow up tests concentrating on 1) longer focal lengths with the F11 and 2) ISO 800 and 1600 pics.