John Sheehy
Forum Pro
No; I wanted a camera that I could use for shots where it would be inconvenient to have my eye to the viewfinder. My Sony F707 fits that description, but it doesn't offer RAW, and it handles reds very poorly.ay John, how comes you got a FZ50? Panasonic looking for advice?
I've heard complaints about the Lumix noise, but it was my suspicion that it was the JPEGs that were ugly. Upon inspecting FZ50 RAW data for the last few days, it is my early conclusion that the FZ50 RAW data is very good for a sensor that size, with such small pixels. The noise is mostly shot noise, and there is nothing that can be done about that. Shot noise is only called "noise" because we don't want to see it. It's really not noise at all; it's part of the nature of light; it is present in all so-called "analog" light; in any slice of time, there are a variable number of photons likely to hit a given area.
Those other cameras that seem to give better output with a similar sensor; they are just hiding noise more with post-digitization noise reduction, IMO. The JPEGs of small-sensor cameras, in general, look poor by my standards; I'd rather just see chromatic noise filtering as any RAW converter does, with the luminance noise left intact, as the only form of "noise reduction".
The problem is not so much the megapixel race, as it is the noise reduction race. You just have to under-stand and accept the limitations of a small sensor.
On the Open Talk forum, I have a comparison of the Canon 10D DSLR (which collects about 12x as many photons per pixel) and the FZ50 doing the same thing (same focal length, same ISO and manual settings), where the FZ50 compares quite well, for overall image quality (IMO):
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1018&message=21951242
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John
