WB150 review.

An interesting review of the WB150f, the little brother to the WB850f.
A shorter zoom and no wi-fi. No great loss when reading how the wi-fi
under performs. This could be a better buy just waiting to be discovered.

http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews/samsung_wb150f_review/
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Mike

I just bought it for $149 at Adorama. Seems it's the only place available.

Through a combination of eBay and forgetfulness, I own three identical copies of the Samsung WB150 - save that one has WiFi - and is white, not black!

I am therefore in a position to compare the image quality between individual examples of the same camera make and model - something I have not seen done before.

My method was simple, if crude: take shots at both extremes of the lens range, using a low ISO setting (100), and with the aperture set to f4.5, since that seems to be 'as good as it gets'.

I then placed the cameras on a table, set the self-timer and allowed them to take two pictures of the scene before them - that of a house wall, some 80m or so away - one at the widest and one at the longest lens settings.

The image files were saved at 'best JPEG' settings and then viewed, unchanged, on a decent 23" monitor at 100% crop.

There proved to be considerable variation between the three WB150 cameras, with the sharpest proving to be at least as good as a brand-new Panasonic FZ1000 and considerably better than a Fuji FinepixF100FS (which was roughly the same as the worst WB150).

Now, the FZ1000 can do a lot of things very much better than even the best little WB150 can - but NOT take sharper pictures under normal daylight conditions (100% overcast grey cloud, to ensure constant lighting throughout my test), and that's true whether used at wide angle or telephoto (~400mm) settings.

This result is NOT what I expected!  I post it here just to show everyone - from pixel-peepers to casual snappers - that the best image quality depends on a great deal more than buying an example of a  top-rated camera on here (and elsewhere), BUT ALSO getting a particular individual camera which is at, or near, the the upper reaches of their quality control curve (as I assume all examples of each model sent out for review are selected to be!)

Here are the photos - all centre crops from images taken at 'Normal' camera settings and 'best quality' JPEGs, with exposure adjusted to avoid highlight bleaching in the sky:

FZ1000 ISO125 400mm (eq)

WB150 (model #1) ISO100, 400mm (eq)

WB150 (model #2) ISO 100, 400mm (eq)

WB150 (model #3) ISO 100, 400mm (eq). Note cooler tone as well as general blurring.

Fuji S100FS ISO100, 400mm (eq). Note much warmer tone

None of the cameras accurately reproduces, on my screen at least, the true colour of the bricks, though all three makes of camera produce images which are convincing and appear realistic - until compared with the original!

The Fuji photo was taken 24hrs later - seemingly identical weather (100% overcast), but it's possible that may have altered the overall tone a touch, I suppose.

AWB was used in each case.

On the basis of this test, a £50-£80 pocket-sized camera (from eBay) is as sharp as one costing £700+ and DSLR-like in size.

My decade-old BENQ C60 takes razor-sharp photos (at ISO50!) and images taken with it are the only photos I have taken over the last 50 years that I have ever had hanging on my house walls - enlarged to A3.

Interesting comparisons. You might want to shoot model#3 again; looks like the camera focused very nicely on the leaves in lower right, instead of the building.