Wednesday, April 18, 2007

End of the Line

Which was taken with the E-500 + 14-45mm Kit Lens?





As promised I am doing some side by side comparisons of the Lumix FZ20 and the E-500. These shots were taken at the same place and the same time both developed from raw/tiff 16bit in LightRoom and then sized, cropped and sharpened in PE4.

I ended up liking the looks of the FZ20 image shot at native ISO 80 better than the E-500 image shot at ISO 200. The IS 8-72mm lens on the FZ20 lets me shoot at ISO 80 were I would need ISO 400 using the E-500.

Later today I will post 100% crops of both images to show you what I have already seen, the out of camera image from the FZ20 at 100% actually looked a little better than the E-500. Perhaps this is because the TIFF mode in the FZ20 still applies some sharpening even when you set sharpening in the camera to low. FZ20 doesn't have a raw mode but it does have a 16bit TIFF mode.

***FOLLOW UP*** 100% crops with 25% sharpening in LightRoom









Note: These 100% crops were sharpened in LightRoom.



In both sets the top one is the E-500 shot and there is a combination of depth of field and camera shake. The E-500 was shot at 45mm at f8 and 1/100th with the rail joiners as the point of foucs. My hand wasn't steady enough and even the rail joiners are soft when viewed at 100%.

The second photo was taken at 14.5mm f4 1/160th and the IS in mode2. The out of camera TIFF plus 25% sharpening in LR is quite sharp even with sharpening set to low and the image would require very little extra sharpening. The depth of field at 14.5mm and f4 is much greater than 45mm at f8 all other things being sort of equal.

I should have used a tripod to eliminate camera shake, however this illustrates the advantages of IS in real life shooting situations.

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