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does super zoom = poor sensor?

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noah cohn

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i am shopping for a non-DSLR camera and i love the idea of having 20x or higher zoom levels, but every zoom camera i examine has consistently lower image quality than similarly priced cameras with much lower zoom such as the canon G11 with 5x..

is it a pricing thing so that companies can produce zoom cameras like a novelty device? or is there a physical reason that long zoom point and shoot cams cannot have as good image quality overall? if so - where does the trade off begin? 6x? 12x?

i am trying to upgrade from a Canon G7, but I see that it has better image quality than some current zoom cameras even though it is from 2006...

i am looking at the FZ100 and waiting for canon to announce the SX20 replacement..

thanks for any input!
 
The G11 has a bigger sensor than the current crop of super-zooms. SONY and Fujifilm have tried longer zoom cameras with bigger sensors, and the cameras were big as well. I for one balked at that bulk. Those cameras did not sell well.

So if you want a camera with 20x zoom and more, you have to put up with the extra noise.

Then again - how many pictures have you printed up to size A2 in the last year? The fact is, when my A3 size printer died, I did not replace it - and the A2 size prints I had printed elsewhere are in a large folder, unseen.

Henry

--



Henry Falkner - SP-570UZ, Stylus 9010, Stylus 7020, D-490Z
http://www.pbase.com/hfalkner
 
The smaller the sensor, the smaller the lens can be. Additionally, the larger the zoom range, the larger the lens typically is.

So to keep a camera small but still maintain a large zoom range, the manufacturers have to decrease the sensor size, resulting in potentially lower IQ.
 
noah cohn said:
i am shopping for a non-DSLR camera and i love the idea of having 20x or higher zoom levels, but every zoom camera i examine has consistently lower image quality than similarly priced cameras with much lower zoom such as the canon G11 with 5x..

is it a pricing thing so that companies can produce zoom cameras like a novelty device? or is there a physical reason that long zoom point and shoot cams cannot have as good image quality overall? if so - where does the trade off begin? 6x? 12x?

i am trying to upgrade from a Canon G7, but I see that it has better image quality than some current zoom cameras even though it is from 2006...

i am looking at the FZ100 and waiting for canon to announce the SX20 replacement..

thanks for any input!
Click to expand...
The problem is that 'superzooms' were moved from 'serious amateur' to 'junk-gadget' product category.

What makes it unlikely for us to see anything near to performance and build quality of the old glorious 2/3" 5MP Nikon 5700, Sony 717 and Canon S-1 in the future.
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Rapick
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Apart from the sensor issues discussed on the other posts, I believe that very high zoom ratios inevitably leads to poor optical quality of the lens.

The very best lenses on DSLRs have a fixed focal length - no zoom. Professional grade DSLR zoom lenses are rarely more than 3x. The reason for this is that it is impossible to design lenses that have optimum image quality over the whole zoom range and therefore compromises have to be made especially at extremes of the zoom range.

This may be the reason that the best compact cameras (Canon G11, Panasonic LX3, etc.) have restricted zoom ranges.
--
Chris R
 
Which sensor are you talking about? image sensor? AF sensor? metering sensor? People throw around the term "sensor" too often when most cameras have multiple instruments that measure/sense something.
 
More zoom requires either a bigger lens, a smaller sensor, or both. In addition, when you extend the focal length to full zoom, the aperture must reduce, so you get less light on the sensor. That requires slowing the shutter speed, which entails more risk of blur, especially in low light.

If you use a tripod, you can get a good shot with a super zoom and a small sensor, provided the subject is still or moves only slowly. In other words, anything but kids, animals, or flinching adults.

A DSLR with a large sensor captures more light, but a 400mm zoom lense weighs too much to use without a tripod or monopod. If you try to shoot a picture with a lense that size, supporting the camera only with your hands, it will wiggle so much that the result can be as blurry as one taken with a smaller camera with a small lens.

Moral of the story: a stable camera and good light are mandatory for ultra zoom photography, no matter what the sensor size. However, even with those ingredients, haze, dust, UV difusion, and other distortions will make the result less effective than if you simply get up close to that grizzly, eagle perch, or ET at the tiller of a hovering UFO.
 
Agreed. Just so much designers can do with a single lens. Even lenses like the zuper zooms on dSLRs (18-200, 18-270, etc), while offering lots of versatility, are relatively soft at a lot of focal length/aperture combinations.
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So much twaddle about sensor size and IQ.

The Panasonic DMC-FZ-LEICA lensed "superzooms" are as good as any superzoom, going all the way back the DMC FZ-20 which has the only f/2.8 throughout the zoom range lens and at 5 Megapixels, does 8x10s with easy.

5 Megapixels you say? Yeah, 5 kick-ass LIECA megapixels.
 
--There is a lot of truth in all the above. However, the "sensors" are improving rapidly so the smaller sizes used in superzooms are actually not the major impediment they once were. As for zoom lenses they too are improving with newer computer designing and fabrication. This improvement is aided by software correction. Generally smaller sensors = smaller cameras = smaller lenses. Whats not to like?

Don V. Armitage
 
Very high quality cinema lenses regularly go to 15x, and weight about 8 pounds and cost as much as a car. Almost anything is possible, for a price in $ and size.

HJ
 
Super zooms from my experience have really good IQ compared to slim P&S cameras. But you are comparing them to DSLR alternative cameras. Cameras like the G series is made to compare to SLRs to some degree. So those and any other camera in a similar class are the top of the top of P&S type cameras. Then comes mega zooms followed by slim P&S. This from what I can tell and my experience.
--

Darkness is the monster and your shutter is your sword, aperture your shield and iso your armor. Strike fast with your sword and defend well with your shield and hope your armor holds up.
 
Razr said:
So much twaddle about sensor size and IQ.

The Panasonic DMC-FZ-LEICA lensed "superzooms" are as good as any superzoom, going all the way back the DMC FZ-20 which has the only f/2.8 throughout the zoom range lens and at 5 Megapixels, does 8x10s with easy.

5 Megapixels you say? Yeah, 5 kick-ass LIECA megapixels.
Click to expand...
Actually PANASONIC megapixels.
--
Brian Schneider

 
For 2 reasons basically. Without getting too technical (basically due to my lack of knowledge!):
  • optically speaking: is a lot easier and cheaper to make a lens that performs better if the focal lenght is fixed or has a smaller range. With the same type of construction/materials a lens that has 3x zoom with perform better than one with 20x zoom.
  • sensor size due to a narrower light cone: for a given lens diameter, the longer the lens (more zoom) the narrower the light cone to the sensor will be. So the manufacturer has 2 options - increase the diameter of the lens or reduce the size of the sensor.
 
wow.. that is a lot of responses! thank you for all of this valuable info..

i am wondering now - do the newer brains of 2010 cameras make up for a sensor smaller than my G7? in this case i mean the imaging sensor is newer and the other sensors are newer with better processing - so could i expect an upgrade in overall photo fidelity? my G7 does not compensate automatically for bright sunlight, dark scenes, etc very well.. i notice that ISO and other ranges are always expanding.. i can see that the zoom cams have worse pixel for pixel accuracy than my G7, but do the 2010 cams have better auto adjustments than 2006 models?
 
noah cohn said:
... but do the 2010 cams have better auto adjustments than 2006 models?
Click to expand...
My experience is they have. This year's 10x zoom Olympus Stylus 9010 can do almost everything with a dumbed down feature set, that I can only do with manual settings on my 2008 SP-570UZ 20x super-zoom.

Henry

--



Henry Falkner - SP-570UZ, Stylus 9010, Stylus 7020, D-490Z
http://www.pbase.com/hfalkner
 
noah cohn said:
wow.. that is a lot of responses! thank you for all of this valuable info..

i am wondering now - do the newer brains of 2010 cameras make up for a sensor smaller than my G7? in this case i mean the imaging sensor is newer and the other sensors are newer with better processing - so could i expect an upgrade in overall photo fidelity? my G7 does not compensate automatically for bright sunlight, dark scenes, etc very well.. i notice that ISO and other ranges are always expanding.. i can see that the zoom cams have worse pixel for pixel accuracy than my G7, but do the 2010 cams have better auto adjustments than 2006 models?
Click to expand...
Broadly speaking, the larger each photo receptor on the image sensor, the better the native IQ (with regard to low light performance).

So, again broadly speaking, the higher the "pixel density" (MP/cm2), the poorer the 'base information' that the camera 'brain' has to deal with.
Let's list:
'new' FF DSLR's (typical): 1.4 to 3.1 MP/cm2
'new' APS-C DSLR's (typical) 2.7 to 5.4 MP/cm2
m4/3: 5.1 MP/cm2
'old' 2/3" - 5 MP superzoom: 8.0 MP/cm2
'new' superzooms: 50 MP/cm2
'new' HiQ compacts (LX-5, S-95): 24 MP/cm2
Canon G7 (for comparison): 26 MP/cm2

Now, does this mean that, speaking about IQ, an old Coolpix 5700 or Cybershot 717 (year 2002) can compete with a modern DSLR? Absolutely no.
Or a Lumix FZ100 is 6 times worse? Again: NO

The reason is that there has been a huge improvement in sensors technology, image processors hardware and software, etc.

The problem is (IMHO) that most of the 'gain' coming from better technology has been wasted in the 'megapixel race' (5 to 18) and 'superzoom race' (8x to 24x) while keeping the actual IQ (at higher ISO) at (or below) a barely acceptable level.

--
Rapick
Jalbum supporter
http://www.pbase.com/rapick
http://rapick.jalbum.net/
 
Panasonic had the best Megazoom in the FZ30, and ever since, it's been taking one step forward, and two or three steps back.

The FZ50 was a flop because of automatic noise reduction that killed sharpness. The subsequent models were crippled by abandoning the internally zooming lens and with it the manual zoom and focus rings.

All Panasonic had to do to stay on top was to keep the FZ30/50 body and add the enhancements of built in wide angle, greater telezoom range, and user customized modes.

They've crippled the FZ line deliberately, probably because they want to force users to buy into their pseudo DSLR line.
 
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