I have looked at the Sony S70 and Nikon CP990 cameras using your comparometer - Great Feature on your site!! It looks in like the Sony S70 has a better image - sharper and less artifacting. I did notice that the file size of the Sony (Hi Res House 1368kb) is larger than the CP990 (1111 kb) by about 23%. Does this lower JPEG compression in the S70 lead to the clearer, sharper, less artifacted image?

When you tested the resolution, was this done in TIFF mode for both cameras? The S70 shows a really smooth, un-artifacted background in the resolution charts - does the S70 also beat the CP990 for image clarity and lack of artifacts if the cameras are used in TIFF mode and then compared?

I am really interested in these two cameras and trying to pick the best of the two. I would appreciate your comments on the above.

Many thanks

Chris Vogler

-- Chris Vogler (uleinc@storm.ca), May 12, 2000

Answers

The S70 is indeed the sharpest digicam we've tested to date. Some of this has to do with an excellent lens, some of it with the fact that the camera doesn't apply as much "sharpening" (edge contrast enhancement) in the camera than other cameras. I think this is the major difference between the S70 and the CP990: The Nikon tends to use a bit more in-camera sharpening than I'd prefer to see. The difference in file size probably doesn't account for much of the difference in image sharpness: At that low a compression ratio, the only place you're likely to see significant differences between files is in the shadow detail. (More JPEG will make the dark tones of shadows posterize and appear very blocky, but you'll probably only notice it if you boost the brightness of the image considerably.)

-- Dave Etchells (web@imaging-resource.com), May 15, 2000.