Introduction:
My Sis badly wanted a new DigiCam, so I decided to hand her down my recently acquired A-520 and pick a bigger & better toy for myself
(I know that was mean :bleh: )With my budget of >20K My choices were limited between the Canon S2 IS, Sony DSC-H1 and the Panasonic Lumix FZ5
Not too convinced of Sony's capabilities on Cameras & Optics and having used Dad's Canon S2 IS and being more than impressed with its performance, the choice was pretty clear for me.
Oh well, at least it was till Tracerbullet convinced me to give the DSC-H1 a chance.
So I sauntered to a store last Saturday, got hold of all three cams out of the display and took all sorts of shots as i could.
After a few store visits, camera trials and based on my past experience with the S2, I created my usual comparison spreadsheet and this is what the final tally looked like:
As you can see, it was a very very close choice...Perhaps a minor changes in the weightages could have switched the decision.
Both the cameras are very capable machines and there really is very little to differentiate between the two.. Read on to know more:
Size/Weight/Form Factor:
The Sony DSC-H1 is a classicaly stylish and biggish camera which weighs close to 500gms with the batteries in. The 12X optical lens (36-432mm
equivalent) takes up the bulk of the volume. The lens barrel is metal while the rest of the body is plastic with a rubberized grip.
Overall though, the camera looks very classy. The 2.5" LCD (no swivel as on the S2 though) is bigger than any other camera in its class.
The camera comes with a pair of lens adapters that allow you to attach standard SLR lenses.
The Pros: Big LCD, Classy looks
Cons: Relatively bulky and big
With the Lens Adapter
Features
ALl the usual culprits, Auto mode, Program AE, Aperture priority, shutter priority, full manual, ISO selection, center/multi point/flexible spot/manual focus, auto/preset/manual White balance, burst mode yada yada yada
Pictures:
Color & balance - Excellent auto WB capabilities as expected.The colors are mildy skewed towards red that imparts a warmer feel to the pictures (vs. Canon S2 which has a blue skew for cool looking pictures)
Exposure: Taking Well exposed photos is easy thanks to the realtime histogram displayed on screen. Thus you can tweak the exposure compensation and timing to get the exposure just right.
Sharpness: Very well defined pictures. No issues with the image clarity and sharpness, even for low light shots.
The auto image stabilization does a very good job at keeping images sharp and clear for long exposure shots. With Auto IS off, the same low light shots would turn out way too blurry.
Optics:
12X is about the best that you get in a consumer camera today.
Chromatic aberration, and purple fringing do show up on long zooms but are less pronunced than on the S2 IS.
Focusing abilities: Thanks to The bright AF light and the usage of some nice algorithms on the microprocessor, the H1 does amazingly well on focusing at close as well as distant objects from well lit to very dark conditions. This perhaps was the clincher that made me chose the H1 over the S2
Performance:
Start-to-ready and Flash recycle time are about average. .nothing great, nothing to complain about.
The continuous shot mode on the S2 is a lot better though
Flash[ Very bright flash though with a tendency to wash out images less than 4-5 feet away. Fortunately, you can adjust the flash level in three steps
Image Noise
The Image noise is almost imperceptible till as high as ISO200 and that is very remarkable (ISO 50 and 100, there is no visible noise) At ISO400, there is perceptible noise yet fairly low. However, the low noise comes at the cost of loss of detail.
As with any decent cam, you can switch to Manual mode and increase the exposure while lowering the ISO
Nevertheless, an excellent low light performer all in all.
Compared to the S2, this is what i think:
Pros-
- Best in class AF capabilities
- Very good image stabilization.. even hand held 1/8 secound exposures came out real sharp
- (Relatively) Low on noise at higher ISOs..barely discernible noise up to ISO 200, Relatively less noise on ISO 400... The Panasonic FZ came out a bummer on this front with noise visible even on the LCD screen
Cons:
- Uses MPEG1 for Videos.. Poor video quality with artifacts and choppiness.. The S2 IS on the other hand delivers very good videos for a digicam.
In fact I do not intend to use my Cam as a video camera at all which is why I assigned a low weightage to this parameter. However for someone interested in using his/her digicam as a Video cam too, the S2 IS makes a definite better choice
- the S2 has a much Faster continous mode
Other factors:
Other factors that don't fit into any of the categories above:
The Good: Uses 2 AA batteries (vs 4 on S2IS) , Comes with a pair of NiMHs and a charger
The Bad: non-intuitive manual focus, real bad user manual (as if i care
)Conclusion: This was a very close contest between the S2IS and H1. The FZ5 was out in the 1st round no Thanks to the image noise on higher ISOs
Also, the subconscious factor of having already played around with Dad's S2IS too may have played a role (for the thrill of getting a totally new toy
)In the end however, the better AF capabilities, lower image noise and awesome image stabilization won over the better Video capabilities and the faster performance on the S2
To round this off, A few sample pics.
Unfortunately, I Haven’t got the chance yet to shoot some brightly lit sunny pics so I'll make do with this:
Cloud day shot
Nightshot
Nighshot
Indoor shot
Evening shot
Evening shot
