It seems the crop of new 5 mp digicams is far from receiving an
unanimous acclamation from its first users according to the posts
in the various forums of dpreview. The Minolta D7, the Sony 707 and
now the Olympus E20 seem to be far from meeting the expectations of
many of the people who bought them. And it seems also the new Nikon
5000 gives some trouble to Nikon who is chasing the sites
displaying preview samples taken with this camera to remove these
samples.
What's wrong? Beyond some drawbacks specific to each model of
camera body, such as D7 autofocus bad performances for instance,
the CCD itself (for now all these cameras share the same 5 mp CCD
produced by Sony) seems to be the main source of troubles: the D7
and E20 are said to have an excessive noise even at their lower ISO
100 or 80 setting, the 707 has artificial "electric colors" and
quite visible artifacts but much less noise. What's in common in
these troubles? in my view, I'd bet it is excessive noise from in
the initial pictures coming from the CCD! Yes, the Sony 707 has
much less noise than the two others, but only because it applies a
strong in-camera processing to remove it after the image is taken,
and this might well be the reason of the artifificial look of the
pictures it produces (artificial lines emphasizing border between
surfaces, artificial looking textures and diificulty to equilibrate
colors).
This kind of problem encountered by the new 5 mp consumer level CCD
was predicted more than one year ago by Fuji. Fuji argued that
2.5/3.3 mp was the maximum that can be reached from consumer level
CCD that have for now a very small surface. To go beyond would be
paid by an excessive amount of noise. And what happens today with
the dissatisfaction encountered by the new 5 mp consumer/prosumer
camera could just prove Fuji was right (while Sony 4 mp CCD seems
to raise a little less criticism, but it is right that 4 mp CCD was
expected to be just a transition and did not raise as much
expectations as did the 5 mp CCD that was presented as the future
stable standard for CCD resoution).
And if Fuji's prediction was right, for consumer level CCD with a
small surface, the superCCD approach promoted by Fuji can well be
the only one reasonable for a while, until CCD with larger area can
be produced at reasonable price (to fit with the less than 1,000$
category).
The Fuji 3.3 mp superCCD that can be found in the Finepix 6800 and
6900, produces natively 6 mp pictures that have a resolution on par
with Sony 5 mp CCD pictures (or at least very close), but Fuji
pictures are rather noise free at ISO 100 and with a very
acceptable level of noise (easily removed on computer, see
http://www.pbase.com/sfjp/neat_image_noise_removal_tests ) at ISO
200 (ISO 400 not so good, though). And the Fuji colors are just
perfect in daylight outdoor pictures. The main defect of the
pictures produced by these Fuji cameras comes from the in-camera
sharpening that creates visible artifacts at full 6 mp resolution:
easy to bypass by using the "soft" sharpening setting instead of
the "normal" one. A secondary defect is due to some difficulty to
masterize the right WB setting for indoor shots, while with some
effort it is possible to find the good solution in most cases (this
might rather be a defect of the current Fuji WB algorithm than of
the superCCD itself). For shots in dark night, the superCCD
exhibits also a significant number of hot pixels for exposures >
1sec., which makes it not very adapted to this kind of use,
although hot pixels can now be easily removed by post-processing
(or in-camera processing with the ad hoc algorithm not available
yet on Fuji cameras).
I think that most comparisons between top mega pixels cameras that
conclude to the triumph of the Sony 5mp CCD over the Fuji 3.3 mp
superCCD just got it wrong in practice. The 3.3 mp superCCD remains
in my opinion the best solution available today for small surface
CCD found in the consumer/prosumer price level and might remain for
long if the ratio price/surface of CCD does not fall significantly
in a short future.
So what? I believe that the Fuji 6800 and 6900 are incredibly
underevaluated by the expert reviewers while they provide, except
for night shots maybe, the best picture quality available today and
may be for a while in the less than 4,000$ camera category (while
the 6800 and 6900 are now sold around 500$ in the US!!). The 6800
and 6900 cameras themselves are not perfect and should be enhanced
in the short future, with a lens that would remain without
distortion in the corners, better night shot ability, a less brutal
in-camera sharpening algorithm, a better autofocus and, please mr.
Fuji, a better EVF on the 6900 successor. But I would be very sad
if for marketing reasons and to comply with the criticismes of the
expert reviewers Fuji would drop its superCCD, to follow the
majority and use instead the Sony noisy 5 mp CCD, except if Fuji
would introduce instead a large surface CCD of its own (or from
Philips?).
Jean-Paul
http://www.pbase.com/sfjp
