Canon S3 IS or Panasonic Lumix FZ8

[ND66]

Can we call all those people that say the more Mega Pixel the better - a PIXEL PEEPERS?



Anyway, one Fuji S6000fd is on it's way.... .


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[Jon P. Inghram]

I meant cropping to keep a smaller portion as a new photo, not for pixel peeping (I for instance had a nice photograph of my grandfather, which was cropped out of a much larger photograph). My 6MP was just sufficiant (on printout, the crop still looked nice), but the resolution of the photo was lower than what it printed (so it could have been better).

I didn't communicate my thoughts very well. Since I don't print my photos, they are normally viewed on a monitor. If I cropped a picture down enough that it's at or close to a 100% magnification (one camera pixel per screen pixel) I'd prefer the camera to be sharp and clean enough that the resulting image still looks acceptable. Some people (including some camera review sites apparently) seem to think that the only measure of a cameras image quality is an uncropped photo printed at 8x10 at low ISOs and 4x6 at higher ISOs, but that means absolutely nothing to me.

Here's an example taken with my S3 IS using the raw mode hack that ended up with a 100% crop:



I realize with bayer pattern sensors using AA filters you aren't going to get the per-pixel sharpness that, for example, Foveon sensors can provide, but I still want the lens (and the camera's JPEG processing if not using raw) to provide a clean and sharp image to the limits of the sensor. The S3 IS lens isn't bad, and the JPEG processing preserves detail pretty well (although I really wish Canon would have included a raw mode.) The Panasonic FZ50 on the other hand, while having a great lens, has a horrible JPEG processor that gives the images a strange gritty "painted" look that goes from bad to worse at ISO 200 and above.

Can we call all those people that say the more Mega Pixel the better - a PIXEL PEEPERS?

Of course I want more pixels! If someone came out with a 12 megapixel 1/2.5" sensor that had less noise and better dynamic range than the 6 megapixel one in my S3 IS I'd be thrilled! Of course that's not going to happen any time soon (or probably ever,) especially with a marketplace full of consumers want a camera with more "megapixels" than their old camera (in quotes because they most likely haven't a clue what that even means) and with manufactures marketing people perfectly content to sell rehashed versions of last years models with sensors that are even more noisy than before.

Personally, I'd be happy with something like a Panasonic FZ50 (or a slightly scaled up S3 IS) with one of Fuji's 6 MP sensors, like in that S6000fd.