A crop from the original

Sony H1.

Canon S2 IS

Canon EOS 350D. Again, the photo from the DSLR is softer. It lacks contrast and sharpness. It's like looking at the photos from a cheap lens.

Basic processing

Sony H1. We can also add some sharpness to the photos from the compact cameras.

Canon S2 IS. As soon as we start mending the photos, some errors occur. Some values start to merge and there's some banding visible.

Canon EOS 350D. With a little work we got the sharpness, while all tonal values stayed in normal range.

Additional manipulation

Sony H1. After extreme manipulation, we lose details in green and yellow colors. The text can still be read.

Canon S2 IS.

Canon EOS 350D. The text is more legible.

400 ISO, basic processing

Sony H1, 400 ISO. Contrast is ok, colors are vivid. As we've seen before, noise is kept down.

Canon S2 IS, 400 ISO. Noise is more apparent, but more details are visible.

Canon EOS 350, 400 ISO. No noise, sharpness is better, tonal values are well preserved. All wrinkles on the paper are clearly visible.

400 ISO, additional corrections and cropping

Sony H1. The squares are visible again. They are the result of some noise reduction algorithm. By doing so, the contrast is still high, the text is still legibly, but the colors are vivid in all cases so there are fewer possibilities for further manipulation.

Canon S2 IS. Noise is high, letters are merging with the background and are difficult to read. However there are still a lot of tonal values preserved.

Canon EOS 350D. At ISO 400, the winner is definitely a DSLR camera.

page 6 / differences in pictures