Four Thirds sensor resolutions tested

[Bob Ross]

Originally Posted by Ian

The reference to Leica is interesting - maybe some Leica influence crept in at the Panasonic planning stage for the L10? The question of whether the L10 actually has a AA filter at all is interesting and I will do my best to get this question answered.

Ian

Hi Ian,
That would be fun to find out along with the "image quality stategies". Leica's versions of the Panasonic P&S seem to have a tweaked IQ, so there are some differences of opinions at work between these partners on what a proper picture should look like and how to get there. Oly seems to have a strong foundation, which may have been influenced by professional photographers, their clients and, of course, the masters of color, Kodak (from the E-1 development). IMO, the E-1 and the E-3 were developed for the professional publishing sector and Oly built the IQ for that, rather than the enthusiast looking for punch. The publishing industry has changed as it has gone digital, which you know more about than I, and the differences btween the E-1 and the E-3 might reflect that in some way.
Good fun.
Bob

[Ian]

Originally Posted by olyinaz

Would it be possible to get the DMC-L1 or Digilux 3 added to the test results?

Thanks,
Oly

I don't have either of these models in my arsenal, but I will see if I can get loan samples. I won't have time to do more testing for a couple of weeks as I'll be on holiday shortly.

Ian

[John Perriment]

Originally Posted by Ian

I don't have either of these models in my arsenal, but I will see if I can get loan samples. I won't have time to do more testing for a couple of weeks as I'll be on holiday shortly.

Ian

Hope it's somewhere nice - have a good time!

[olyinaz]

Thanks Ian!

Have a good break.

Best,
Oly

[Ian]

Originally Posted by John Perriment

Hope it's somewhere nice - have a good time!

I can't escape from work We're going to stay with David and his family (David does a lot of the technical maintenance of our websites). The nice thing is that he now lives in the Vendée in France, not far from La Rochelle. We're away from Saturday and back late on Monday week (21st).

Today Julia has the Panasonic Lumix DMC-L10, plus 50mm macro and 14-150 Leica D - she's in Monaco for a couple of days on a press trip

Ian

[zts]

Originally Posted by Ian

... Today Julia has the Panasonic Lumix DMC-L10, plus 50mm macro and 14-150 Leica D - she's in Monaco for a couple of days on a press trip

Ian

Hi Ian, hope you enjoy your vacation as much as possible. Hey, if you can ask Julia if DMC-L10 has somewhat annoying light metering bugs. I'm slowly coming to a conclusion that the blown highlights in L1 in some situations are due to occasional inaccurate metering and am wondering if that occasional bug has been passed to L10 or (hopefully has been corrected). It's hard to guess when this bug will occur since L1 will meter a scene OK dozen times and then suddenly fail. I guess a contrasting and colorful scene that includes darks and whites will occasionally fool the metering system and only on camera manual correction can save the shot. It's interesting because in similar situations Olys don't exhibit this problem at all.

[John Perriment]

[QUOTE=Ian;16261]I can't escape from work We're going to stay with David and his family (David does a lot of the technical maintenance of our websites). The nice thing is that he now lives in the Vendée in France, not far from La Rochelle. We're away from Saturday and back late on Monday week (21st).

Is that the David who kindly helped me resolve my access problems to FTU a while back? Please give him my regards and my thanks.

Today Julia has the Panasonic Lumix DMC-L10, plus 50mm macro and 14-150 Leica D - she's in Monaco for a couple of days on a press trip

And why not? What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Are you worried she might suggest a role reversal? (How are you at ironing?)

Hope you all have a wonderful break!

Cheers

[zts]

All 4/3:
- The same Leica lens used on all cameras
- RAW, f/11, ISO 100, 26mm focal, no flash, tripod
- shot indoors within a short period of time
- deliberately set as a rather difficult scene with daylight coming from the right hitting the off-white and white reflective surface in the scene

Control shot:
- Pentax K20D

In the first shot, DMC-L1 evaluating the scene at 5 sec blows highlights. Both E-510 and E-3 do remarkably good job. While the control shot with Pentax initially appear the best, a slight edge goes to E-3 in its more successfully resolving the gradation in the color chart and far better in pulling out the detail from the distant far left pillow on the chair. Anywho, you can judge for yourself:

[Kuifje]

It's quite funny that the dpreview oly slr forum topic on this test is a quite interesting read. So Ian, you must have done something right (although some claim the results are wrong).

The discussion is almost an invite for "part II" what to do and how to interpred the results. I especailly like Bobs calculus demonstrating to what print size the E-1 fine detials will be preserved in lp/mm. In the end my personal conclusion is that I prefer to sacrafice a bit of resolution for a better working AA filter and smoother fine detail.

And, thanks to Bob, ofcourse that my E-1 is able to print fine details at larger sizes than I usually do. Gives me a bit of leeway to wait for an Oly Exx

(Btw. be sure to include St Martin's harbour at Ile du Re if you are in the neigbourhood of La Rochelle .. you may find some photo-opportunities there and some good food to go along with it!)