In short, I have been rather disappointed with this camera. It has become apparent to me that the bulk of this camera’s cost comes in its extra waterproofing (10m) and ruggedness over its competitors, because its image quality and full-auto mode are nothing to brag about.
First, some relatively positive impressions to share:
1) As advertised, the camera was tough as a rock. I enjoyed not having to worry about it at all. Save for a minor scratch on the LCD (apparently you still gotta buy a screen protector!) and some cosmetic scratches on the front face, the camera is, well.. an impenetrable hunk of metal. And it feels it too.
2) I liked the LCD screen a lot. I don’t know how to describe it, maybe it was the lack of an LCD protective screen, but it was just a joy to use, even in bright sunlight.
3) Start up is relatively quick, tap controls work well, zooming is quick, and shot-to-shot times are decent enough for regular use.
4) Its “full auto” mode impressively switches among shot modes by detecting when the camera is submerged in water, detecting faces, macro mode and landscape modes which works well about 80% of the time… we’ll talk about the other 20% of the time below.
5) Self-portrait mode worked like a charm. It worked so well I almost started using it for normal portraits.. I’ll have to test this method of using the camera more before coming to any conclusions about it though.
Now for the negative impressions (oh boy!):
1) The image quality is really not that great. details are almost always blurred (low resolution), even more so out on the edges of the frame, with only a few random shots showing decent sharpness. And there’s also a healthy dose of sharpening in there. (Check out the sample pic below.) If cameras were priced based on image quality alone, this camera would sit in the $100-$200 range.
2) As mentioned at the end of my first post about this camera, the camera CONTINUES to blur pictures. Usually blurring occurs in the shade, more often if you force the flash off, but also in full auto mode. Based on my analysis, the camera seems to believe that an average user can hold the camera steady at a shutter speed of 1/30 of a second.. Basically, to achieve maximum image quality, the camera will set its auto ISO as low as possible so long as a shutter speed of 1/30 sec or faster is preserved.
With this camera, don’t be surprised if most of the pictures you take in the shade (even on the sunniest of days) come out blurred. Image stabilization is working as far as I can tell, but no stabilization system is perfect, no user can consistently hold a P&S camera at 1/30 sec, and no subject is guaranteed to stay perfectly still for 1/30 sec. Very poor design choice. I hope a future firmware update changes this.
3) This camera comes with a fancy “full auto” mode (mentioned earlier), which I thought was very awesome initially… UNfortunately, the system isn’t perfect. The most annoying thing is when you’re trying to take a portrait (bc your subjects do get impatient) and the camera doesn’t find a face so it changes to sport mode (high ISO) or landscape mode (disabling flash during a back-lit picture)… and trust me, it fails to find faces quite often, especially when the faces are too small in the picture.
4) I wish the ISO, shutter speed, and aperture to be used would be displayed after I half press the shutter button. That way I can gauge whether I need to manually adjust any of the settings.
In summary, image quality is sub-par but, to be honest, many other compacts exhibit the same level of quality. I suppose one simply has to remind himself that the high cost of this particular compact is due to the camera’s OTHER abilities such as drop protection, water protection, and crush protection, etc etc. All of which are truly impressive.
It is in actual usage, away from that discerning computer monitor, that this camera disappoints. When capturing portraits of people with this camera, I find myself often having to retake a photo (once I took 3 shots in auto mode which resulted in 3 different mode settings — all wrong — before I gave up and set things manually). Or if I trust the camera and don’t retake any photos, it’s not unusual to find out later that the photo is extremely noisy, motion blurred, or backlit etc and I’d just have to live with it. I’d say maybe around… 20% of the portrait shots have failed in one way or another. Whether that figure is actually accurate or not, trust me, the high percentage of failed shots got a bit frustrating.
[Disclaimer: I did not run controlled tests or comparisons using this camera so make of my "report" what you will.]
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Sample Photo
The pic looks great at a small size, but at 100% you know you’re not getting the $500 quality you’d expect. Note that the following picture was taken at the camera’s native resolution at its optimal settings on a bright and sunny day. You know, maybe I’m too demanding on the quality of this compact, but I was disappointed by the crazy smearing of detail in the foliage..
Hanauma Bay in Hawaii. Scaled down from full rez photo, f5.0, 1/500s, ISO 64, landscape mode. 100% crop area indicated in red.
100% crop... ick
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UPDATE: More Sample Pictures
Check here for more sample pictures: http://dc.watch.impress.co.jp/cda/review/2009/03/09/10385.html
One Comment
Ah.. I should add that under water, with the camera pinned continually to an underwater mode, I have no complaints about this camera. I had a couple shots that were out of focus, but I suspect those were caused by user error rather than any fault of the camera.
My only tip would be to hang on tight to this camera because it sinks fast! I assume that waterproof housing usually serves to provide some buoyancy to a camera?.. don’t know first-hand though. Anyway, the wrist band is also relatively useless underwater so don’t depend on it too much.