http://www.nytimes.com/20...l?pagewanted=1&oref=login
Superzoom Review: Ugly, Bulky and They Get You Real Close
By WILSON ROTHMAN
Published: June 8, 2005
AS most digital point-and-shoot cameras get slimmer and sexier, one category stays chunky and, by comparison, pretty ugly: superzoom cameras. With their wide-barrel lenses and jowly grips, they are the bulldogs of the species. But some have got a bite to match their bark.
A superzoom camera packs a lens that magnifies everything up to 12 times, letting you snap close-ups from a longer distance. It is intended for the soccer mom who gets yellow-carded for stepping onto the field with her shorter-range point-and-shoot.
The typical digital camera, on the other hand, has a lens that magnifies in the 3X to 5X range, fine for getting a close-up of someone across the dinner table but not much for tracking fast-moving children on summer vacation.
To get the long view of superzoom cameras, I rounded up
five models that looked, on paper, almost identical: the
Canon PowerShot S2 IS, Kodak EasyShare Z7590, Konica Minolta DiMage Z5, Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5 and Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H1.
Each had five megapixels of resolution. Four had 12X optical zoom lenses, while the fifth, the Kodak, had a 10X lens. All had list prices of $450 to $500, though most are already available online for much less. Even within such tight parameters, however, only one superzoom went vroom-vroom in the end.
Manufacturers like to tech out their cameras with all sorts of features. Some, like panoramic stitching, can be genuinely useful - but if a camera can't take decent pictures, these perks amount to smoke screening. That's why my first test was a look at the pictures themselves: color, detail and noise - the grit inside solid colors that appears in poorer imaging systems.
It is a test anyone can do: tape a colorful image on a wall and take a picture of it. I like to use the vivid TV-industry color bars. To make sure that the zoom lenses were up to snuff, I set each camera on a tripod and shot the test image at 5 feet, 10 feet and 15 feet, all in the same lighting. I printed the results on premium 4-by-6-inch paper with an Epson Stylus Photo RX620, labeling the backs. Then I shuffled my deck of pictures. Sorting through blindly, I picked out shots that best reproduced the colors of the test pattern without getting noisy or losing detail.
Two sets of shots stood out, and I flipped them over to discover they were from the
Canon and the Panasonic.
Just because a camera can take a pretty picture on a tripod does not mean it will do what you want when you want it. Other tests address the various real-life contingencies you may encounter. From across the room, in low light, I shot a row of DVD's on a shelf. Again blindly sorting through them, I determined that the
Canon, the Panasonic and the Sony on average made clearer shots in dim light.
All three manufacturers are quick to point out that those cameras have optical image stabilizers. You generally see these in camcorders, where an unstable image can make the audience feel seasick. The logic does not seem to apply to still images, produced in a fraction of a second.
Nevertheless, my test suggested that optical image stabilizers help with hand-held shots taken in low light. That's when cameras might automatically slow the shutter speed to several fractions of a second - or longer - for a better exposure.
Konica Minolta does not have optical image stabilization, but it does have something called Anti-Shake technology. Rather than keeping the camera's optics stabilized, this is supposed to keep images from looking shaky by detecting movement and adjusting the image sensor to compensate. In my testing, I didn't notice any Anti-Shake benefits. In fact, both the Konica Minolta and Kodak quickly fell to the back of the pack for performance reasons, among them picture quality, shutter lag and herky-jerky operation.
Every camera comes with compromises. These days, a camera isn't just a camera, it's a camcorder, too.
The
Canon, Konica Minolta and Sony models can each shoot video at full TV resolution (640 by 480, also known as VGA). The Panasonic does video at only half that resolution, and the Kodak can do VGA, but at 12 frames a second instead of 30, the industry standard.
The
Canon and Konica Minolta receive my special camcorder commendation for allowing users to zoom in and out while shooting, making for more dynamic home movies. (With software like Ulead VideoStudio, which lets you edit many different types of video formats into DVD-ready movies, you can finally produce a real movie using just your still camera.)
But when it comes to the size of the liquid-crystal-display screen on the back, the Canon and Konica Minolta, and the Panasonic, had the smallest screens, ranging from 1.8 inches to 2 inches (diagonally). The Sony's 2.5-inch L.C.D. screen provided a surprisingly grainy view. Though it is the largest screen of the cameras I compared, it actually has among the lowest screen resolution. The Kodak's 2.2-inch screen produces a sharper picture, with nearly a third more pixels.
People with some training in photography will appreciate that all these cameras offer decent manual control, including the ability to set aperture and shutter speed. What might also be of interest to semipros is that while the Panasonic and Kodak come with long-lasting proprietary lithium-ion batteries, the other three give the option of using standard store-bought AA's, so you are never caught in the field with a dead battery. The Sony gives you a choice: it comes with two rechargeable AA's, which lasted a surprisingly long time in my tests.
Back in the lab,
Canon and Panasonic shared the lead yet again when I examined the frustrating issue of flash.
I shoot mostly without a flash. Partly, I just prefer it when my friends and family "act naturally," which means I sometimes take five or six shots at a time to get one really fun shot. But I also skip the flash because so many point-and-shoot cameras can't handle their own flash bulbs; instead of illuminating, they wash out everything within a four-foot radius.
I turned on the flash in two dimly lighted spots with each camera, and I also forced the flash to go off when shooting a white orchid that had too much background light. That's called a fill flash, and is very useful when shooting people outdoors, too. Upon examining the anonymous prints, the most evenly lighted shots were from
Canon and Panasonic.
My final test was action shooting. Let's face it - the biggest reason to have versatile cameras like these is to excel where lesser cameras fall short. The fastest-moving entity in my lab is an 11-month-old cat named Silas Rothman, who prefers swatting cameras to posing for them. I never use a flash on Silas, so don't call the Humane Society; in broad daylight with all the windows open, I didn't need a flash.
Speedy autofocus and shutter reaction are crucial, so set the camera to sports mode: look for the icon with the runner or, in Sony's case, the golfer. You'll see pretty quickly which cameras are up for cat and mouse and which aren't. I wasn't surprised when the Konica Minolta failed to keep up with Silas's evasive maneuvering, but I was pleased to see the Kodak give chase. The shocker was that the Canon, a leader until now, got winded. On average, its shots just weren't focused enough.
The Panasonic and the Sony swept this challenge, speedily delivering a fair amount of crisp shots.
If you have been keeping score, you know that the winner of my superzoom challenge was the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5. While it has a few shortcomings, they are offset by a simple design and consistently high performance. The Canon and Sony were worthy competitors, and deserve silver and bronze medals. As for the other two bulldogs, I'm reminded of the saying: if you can't run with the big dogs, don't bark when they go by.