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SLR vs. Point and Shoot

Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:24:31 -0600

Forget about the faster autofocus performance, lower shutter lag -- it's still about the image. While the point and shoot has progressed, it's still best suited for quick snaps and group photos. At least that's the conclusion I came to after putting the latest generation point and shoot against a last generation digital SLR in the May issue of Maximum PC.

I used a 12MP Canon PowerShot SD950IS and shot a few images at the camera's highest ISO: 1600 and compared it the older 10MP Canon EOS Rebel XTi at 1600 ISO and the rebel wins hands down. Images from the Rebel were fairly noise free while the 12MP PowerShot produced noisy, "grainy" images that looked like 1970s "high-speed" print film. Frankly, the output is just awful from the point and shoots at high ISO speeds.

The EOS Digital Rebel XTi is an older generation DSLR but it still produces fairly clear images at high ISO speeds. Newer SLRs are even better. Now compare this to the next image.

Taken with a Canon PowerShot SD950IS Digital Elph at 1600 ISO, it's clear that the point and shoots still have a long ways to go in high ISO, low light circumstances. This is mostly a result of the sensor size in the point and shoots which puts them at a natural disadvantage to DSLRs. Generally, as more pixels are crammed onto a sensor, the tendency for noise can increase. This can be offset by better fabrication processes on the sensors and enhanced in camera processing but it's not going to beat the DSLR today.

Point and shoots have certainly come a long, long way from just a few years ago. In fact, I'd say this amount of noise would crop up in vintage 2004 point and shoots at 400 ISO so this isn't bad for a point and shoot but it doesn't compare to the DSLR.

The point and shoot is also at a disadvantage when you're trying to isolate a subject. Most zooms on point and shoots don't feature lenses with large enough aperatures to effectively blur the background. Here, the image on the right was taken with the Elph at F/5.8. That's the largest aperature available on the SD950IS at its telephoto setting of 28.5mm. The image on the left was taken with the Digital Rebel with a 100mm EF Macro lens set at F/2.8. Notice how the distracting background is blurred out in the image. It's not just about the DSLR's ability to slap on a different lens that makes it a more powerful tool though. There's also a relationship between the sensor size and F-stop of the lens that makes it very difficult for the point and shoot to ever achieve that pleasing out of focus background. Basically, at the exposures everyone will shoot with on a point and shoot, almost everything will be in focus because of the tremendous depth of field it has.

This doesn't always work against you though. In landscape photography or group shots where you want everybody in focus, the point and shoot will make life easier.

Still, if we had our druthers and portability wasn't the main factor, we'd suck it up and carry a DSLR for the flexibility and performance.

Digital Maximum PC? It's About Time

Will Smith — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 18:41:03 -0500

Without any ado at all, I'd like to announce the arrival of the free digital edition of Maximum PC. Instead of charging extra for the digital archives or making people jump through hoops to proove you're a subscriber, we just bundled each issue up into a handy-dandy PDF archive and we're making them available to everyone for free!

We'll add links throughout the site soon, but until then, you can access the PDF's through the super-secret PDF archive. We've got the first six months of 2007 posted today, and we'll also be adding the last few years worth of back issues, as well as all new issues as soon as they're off newsstands.

If you like reading the website as it is now, never fear. We'll continue posting our magazine content in browser-friendly formats at the Maximum PC website, as well as in the traditional "dead-tree" format. We're just adding another new way to get Maximum PC.

Hope you enjoy!

Fujifilm FinePix V10

Steve Klett — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 11:11:23 -0500

Are digital cameras now headed in the direction of “smartphones”? gotta wonder when you hear about a point-and-shoot camera games—what’s next, a camera that makes phone calls?

OK, we jest, but if you spent some time with Fujifilm’s FinePix V10, you wouldn’t blame us. As a camera, this is a very capable, very user-friendly, very stylish, compact point-and-shooter. It takes nice 5.1 megapixel photos at ISO speeds up to 1600, thanks to its aggressive, and effective, noisereduction capabilities (though, you’ll still be happiest with images shot at 400 ISO and below).

Its large 3-inch LCD is bright, sharp, and almost makes up for the absence of a traditional viewfinder. The LCD real estate is put to good use, offering a 30-thumbnail display and a useful Post Shot Assist mode that shows the last three snaps alongside the live viewfinder window.

The camera gains up nicely in low-light situations but can still be problematic in bright sunlight. The V10’s a relatively snappy performer, too, with shot-to-shot intervals of less than 2 seconds; plus it offers several burst-mode options, and its 10-step, 3.4x optical zoom lens is smooth, quick, and quiet. The only real glaring chink in the V10’s shiny armor is its lackluster battery life—ours needed a recharge before we hit 100 shots. This is no doubt due to the fancy-pants LCD, and the games, which, quite frankly, are a gimmick.

The camera sports four titles: Number Puzzle, Block Buster, Maze, and Shooting Game (yes, those are the real names.) All of them are more frustrating than fun to play using the camera’s controls, which thankfully are excellent for the V10’s true calling—picture-taking. Photogs can safely ignore the games and focus on the camera’s manual controls, which allow you to quickly and easily perform exposure compensation and white balance tweaks. And the V10 includes a healthy stable of scene presets, covering just about every imaginable shooting condition from nighttime to sports.

The games might be disposable, but the V10’s capabilities are very worthy of consideration—just make sure you also consider an extra battery, or two.

Month Reviewed: October 2006

VERDICT: 8

URL: www.fujifilmusa.com

Kodak EasyShare One

Steve Klett — Fri, 19 May 2006 14:37:08 -0500

Wireless is the new tech race in the compact digital camera field, and Kodak was first out of the Wi-Fi gate with the EasyShare One. This 4 megapixel “compact” camera has 802.11b connectivity that not only lets you print your images wirelessly but also share them on the web.

Kodak calls its Wi-Fi “integrated,” but it requires you to use a separate wireless card (included) that you insert in the top of the camera much like an SD card (same formfactor). You press the top of the card, causing it to pop up, to turn on Wi-Fi. You can then email pics to friends or upload them to the Kodak EasyShare Gallery—where others may view and print them—using your Wi-Fi network at home or some other hotspot. You can also show people your online gallery of pics on the camera’s swiveling 3-inch LCD touch-screen. (The camera comes with a stylus, allowing you to navigate its menus just like a PDA.)

The stylus and graphical menu make it simple to browse and organize your pics (you can even crop pics in-camera and save the results). However, enabling the full wireless capabilities inevitably involves messing around with WEP keys and can involve quite a bit of trial and error (plus, using Wi-Fi severely drains the battery). We had trouble getting our test unit to work with our wireless network at home until we switched from a shared-WEP key to an open key, which was not specified in the instructions.

Wi-Fi aside, don’t let the 4 megapixel rating fool you: This camera takes very nice photos, particularly outdoors. Unfortunately, the video quality is sub-par. Performance-wise, the EasyShare One is a slow starter and is heavier and bulkier than most other 4 megapixel cameras.

If you must have wireless, the EasyShare One is the only game in town—for now. However, it’s still nearly twice as expensive as more full-featured non-wireless cameras with higher resolution capabilities, and we’d really love to see the ability to upload files to other photo-sharing services or a simple FTP site in a future revision.

Month Reviewed: May 2006

Verdict: 6

URL: www.kodak.com

Picture Code Noise Ninja

Gordon Mah Ung — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 15:35:16 -0600

As camera makers have shoved more and more pixels onto tiny imaging sensors, digital pictures have become increasingly noisy and so filled with grain that the old craptacular Disc Camera seems superior at times.

Enter PictureCode’s Noise Ninja, an application that takes a +3 katana to the digital noise that can ruin an otherwise good picture. Ninja comes in a dizzying array of flavors but we looked at the stand-alone professional version (a plug-in for Photoshop is also available). The pro version supports 16-bit images, batch processing, and multi-threading.

We tasked Ninja with cleaning up a couple of grainy images from our own collection, one of which was a candlelit JPEG image taken with a Canon 5D at 3200 ISO. (While the 5D’s full-frame sensor is more than capable of producing clean, sharp pictures, a candlelit shot at 3200 ISO is a challenge for any digital camera.) To compare the Ninja’s performance, we also ran our images through Adobe Photoshop CS2’s built-in noise-reduction filter. There was no contest. CS2’s “free” functionality doesn’t hold a candle to Ninja’s noise reduction, or speed. Furthermore, Ninja is aided by prebuilt profiles that are available for a host of digital cameras models.

What really impressed us was the program’s efficiency. Tweaking an image often requires a lot of back and forth, as you “clean” areas, then revert back to the original, turn a few knobs, and clean again. With other products, it can get pretty tedious because of the slow pace at which the changes are processed. We had no complaints about speed with Ninja. Even on a single-core 3.8GHz Prescott Pentium 4, the performance was snappy. What’s more, Ninja is multithreaded, so users with dual-core PCs and PCs with Hyper-Threading should see an even greater boost in speed. We applaud developers who support today’s hardware instead of pandering to the unwashed masses of ancient Pentium IIIs.

Ninja isn’t just about the hardware support though; its snappy performance, ease of use, and batch processing make it a must-have for anyone who is serious about his or her digital pictures.

Month Reviewed: April 2006

Verdict: 9
kickass=yes

URL: www.picturecode.com

Nikon D50

Gordon Mah Ung — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 16:44:17 -0600

Nikon’s D50, the company’s latest foray into the sub-$1,000 digital-SLR category, outstrips most other budget bodies in its class and kicks much point-and-shoot ass.

Much of that capability comes from the D50’s lineage. The body feels and functions like a detuned D70, which was itself a breakthrough product. The D50 sports the same imaging sensor as the more expensive D70, and delivers terrific bang for the buck.

The body is rated for 2.5fps, which sounds slow, but thanks to fast write times, the D50 will shoot almost continuously until your memory card is full (provided you own a fast card, of course). We tested the D50 with a SanDisk Ultra II SD card and only experienced slowdowns shooting RAW or at high ISO. Nikon likely switched to SD to save space and make the D50 smaller.

The body is plastic but feels solid. Ergonomics are good but a few things irked us. First, you have to use the menus to switch metering modes. And there’s only one command dial, so changing exposure settings in manual mode is cumbersome; it’s much easier with two dials. Hobbyists will also miss a mirror-lock feature for macro or telephoto work, and we hate that the top LCD lacks a backlight. Grrr.

The biggest weakness of the camera is in perception though. At 6.1MP, many consumers will pass on the D50 in favor of a point-and-shoot with a higher pixel count that costs about the same. That would be a mistake. With its larger CCD sensor, the D50 will shoot far superior images to any point-and-shoot on the market today.

With a mirror lock-up feature, and a better viewfinder, this would be a Kick Ass camera, without a doubt. Coming off the full-frame EOS 5D (reviewed in April) and its spectacular viewfinder, the D50 finder looks like a disposable camera’s. That shouldn’t be a deal breaker, though, as the D50 is a great bargain.

Month Reviewed: March 2006

Verdict: 8

URL: www.nikonusa.com