DSLR out-performed by casio?

Hello,

2 shots of the same scene here. which one you think is better?

top: taken with a casio (3.2 megapixel),

bottom: taken with a cannon DSLR (10 megapixel) w/50mm f1.8 lens(digitally 76mm).

To me, the top one seems to have a better color/hue quality... as for the bottom one, something was done wrong, i

don't have enough vocabulary for it. For a beginner, it always seemed tricky to create a balanced

feel between elements. What's your experience? Your input would be appreciated!</p> </b>

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Hi Dama,

 

As your portfolio shows you're hardly a beginner! To me the Casio version looks better composed and has nicer clouds but it is a little off color balance towards blue and impaired by three smudges (dust specks on or in the lens?). The Canon version looks a bit low in contrast and is slightly off balance towards green but can no doubt be made much better with a little software tweaking. The crop could improve by positioning the water's edge exactly between top and bottom edges to balance sky and reflection.

If you really think the quality of the first picture is better than the 2nd, that's fine. You don't need our advice or help.

 

<Chas>

They have different white balance. Top picture seems to be a tad too cold. If you like the top Casio white balance, it is easy to change the white balance on the Canon to a cooler look, especially if you shoot in raw format.

The bottom photo is exposed more, so it has somewhat more washed-out tones. The white balance may also be different. If you like the color and exposure in the top one better, then you can certainly get it with the DSLR.

 

(The Casio needs a good sensor cleaning though.)

You need to adjust white balance to get them to match.

 

Start by setting them to sunlight, not automatic, and make the comparison.

 

The bottom one is off towards the green for whatever reason. The top is off towards blue. Add magenta and yellow reapectively.

The top image is wider (I am assuming resized, not cropped). This probably also means that the cam was metering a wider scene (I am assuming evaluative/matrix metering for both shots), so it metered more for the sky and the reflections. The bottom pic was "seeing" that there were too many shadows in the trees so had to overcompensate a bit (Notice that there are more leaves visible in the bottom shot), so it probably had to meter for most of the trees and just a tad of sky. The WB on the bottom shot seems to me a bit warm, but "truer" to what green looks like, compared to the top. Ronald made a good point about adjusting WB for both cams to compare.

I assume the Casio is a P&S and therefor has been tweaked already in-camera for white balance, tonality range, contrast, sharpening, etc. The difference you see between the two shots then comes down to Casio's in-camera processing versus your settings of the Canon and subsequent processing of the shot. Any "outperforming" is more than likely due to operator skills, not camera capabilities.

What Frans said. Also, if you enlarged the shot for printing the DSLR image would fare much better, assuming the settings were correct or the post processing was done right.

For what it is worth a friend of mine recently sold an image to an ad agency for a big name company for use on a poster. I

believe it was taken with a low megapixel Casio P&S.

James,

Could you point me to the direction of your friend's page? I'd would like to take a look at that image.

 

Frans,

You are right. It is due to skills. It takes skills to shoot with SLR. I can see why most people prefer point and

shoot, especially these days. You can take amazing pictures with a Canon SD1000. It's almost silly to carry a

Rebel XT around unless you are a pro.

Would you, or any average driver, be more likely to make it round a F1 racing circuit like Monaco without crashing, in a Ferrari F1 car or in a Ford Focus? Personally, I'd get better results (ie more likely to survive the lap) in the Ford. Does that make it "better performing"? Not at all.

 

Of course, some people at a certain level will get better results from a fully automatic camera and as long as you're shooting within the "limitations" of the Casio then you will get decent results. It's when you get beyond the limitations of the Casio that the SLR starts to earn its money.

 

As mentioned earler, the white balance has been set differently on your cameras, and obviously the field of view (zoom) is different.

 

cheers,

Guy

To me the first photo has a kind of murky cast to it as well as what looks like a bit of vignette on the corners. Was a polarizing filter used on the first photo? The sky and water are darker in color than they are in the second photo, but there is more sky above the trees and more water below the trees then there is in the second photo. The colors of the trees and water in the scene are kind of bland, but the reflection of the trees in the water is sharper.

 

The second photo looks a bit over exposed, but the colors still look more natural, especially the greens of the trees, which are a lot more variegated, highlighted and natural looking.

 

I would have liked to seen both photos taken the same way, from the same distance for comparison purposes.

It seems to me that the true test would have been the same composition for both shots at the same exposure. It is very hard to compare the two...The casio seems well exposed while the shot with the Canon is over exposed. To me the big difference is that the top one has a dirty sensor (you can see that big dust trail on the water and the canon one is clean....

 

Auto exposure is another beast, take one camera on a tripod with a zoom and you will get a different exposure at different zooms...