Monday, April 5, 2004
Are The Digital Media Dark Ages Over - I'd Say Yes, They Are
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 10:00 AM
Another strong article from Michael Reichmann at The Luminous Landscape, and quite a sobering one to many of you. I'd encourage you to give this a read and let it impact your purchasing decisions.
"The truth of the matter is, that there is now (Q2 — 2004) precious little real-world difference between comparably speced cameras when it comes to image quality. During the past year or so I have tested digital cameras and digital backs from Nikon, Canon, Kodak, Pentax, Olympus, Leaf, Minolta, Phase One, Imacon, Sony and many others. These have not been casual tests. In almost every case I have shot with these cameras and backs on locations around the world, in each case from hundreds to thousands of frames. I have dissected image quality, looking at differences at various ISO settings, long exposure setting and so on. I have put these cameras through tests on the DxO Analyzer system (a new $20,000 optical testing system designed for digital cameras and lenses).
Do I see differences? Of course I do. In almost every area with every camera. But — and here's the main point, so don't doze off — the image quality differences between competitive cameras are becoming very small indeed. In fact when I'm doing comparisons unless I am very careful in naming files and labeling prints it is sometimes almost impossible to tell which is which..."
Like most reviewers, there was a phase in my writing career when specifications were more important than the actual solution provided by the hardware or software. Specifications are important, but only to a point - if company XYZ were to release a motherboard aimed at hard-core gamers, but they only included a 400 mhz system bus, that would be out of sync with where the industry standard is at (800 mhz). But once you get to that standard, does the chipset (which may impact performance by 5%) really matter? To some extent this might be a bad example because motherboards are all about specs, not ergonomics or usability - but I trust you see my point. :wink:
When I started out in my review of the S400, I was quite intimidated because I thought "Gosh, people are going to be expecting a review as detailed as what dpreview did?" Ultimately I decided that I would write the kind of review that I'd want to read myself - one that focused more on how I used the camera and what problems it solved for me, rather than zoomed crops and hunting for chromatic aberrations. That's not to say that the dpreview style of reviews don't have their place - I certainly use it as a starting point for reviews and respect Phil Askey a great deal. But the fact that digital photography has evolved to the point where we can focus more on the ergonomics of the camera and real usability issues rather than nit-picking over image quality is a good thing. It means that camera makes can no longer hide behind the "We have more megapixels than that guy" argument - they'll have to innovate in other ways.
This argument also extends to the audio format war, and ultimately why I get a little irked when people scream that 192 kbps OGG files sound COMPLETELY SUPERIOR to 192 kbps WMA files, or vice-versa. Sure, there will be noticeable differences between a 64 kbps MP3 and a 128 kbps WMA, but once you get to a certain quality level (I'd say anything above 160 kbps), the differences are so small that to most people, it simply doesn't matter. Then other factors come into play that matter more - which format does my audio player use? Which one encodes faster? Which one costs less?
I'd love to hear some feedback from you about this issue, but let's all be brutally honest with ourselves before posting, shall we?
"The truth of the matter is, that there is now (Q2 — 2004) precious little real-world difference between comparably speced cameras when it comes to image quality. During the past year or so I have tested digital cameras and digital backs from Nikon, Canon, Kodak, Pentax, Olympus, Leaf, Minolta, Phase One, Imacon, Sony and many others. These have not been casual tests. In almost every case I have shot with these cameras and backs on locations around the world, in each case from hundreds to thousands of frames. I have dissected image quality, looking at differences at various ISO settings, long exposure setting and so on. I have put these cameras through tests on the DxO Analyzer system (a new $20,000 optical testing system designed for digital cameras and lenses).
Do I see differences? Of course I do. In almost every area with every camera. But — and here's the main point, so don't doze off — the image quality differences between competitive cameras are becoming very small indeed. In fact when I'm doing comparisons unless I am very careful in naming files and labeling prints it is sometimes almost impossible to tell which is which..."
Like most reviewers, there was a phase in my writing career when specifications were more important than the actual solution provided by the hardware or software. Specifications are important, but only to a point - if company XYZ were to release a motherboard aimed at hard-core gamers, but they only included a 400 mhz system bus, that would be out of sync with where the industry standard is at (800 mhz). But once you get to that standard, does the chipset (which may impact performance by 5%) really matter? To some extent this might be a bad example because motherboards are all about specs, not ergonomics or usability - but I trust you see my point. :wink:
When I started out in my review of the S400, I was quite intimidated because I thought "Gosh, people are going to be expecting a review as detailed as what dpreview did?" Ultimately I decided that I would write the kind of review that I'd want to read myself - one that focused more on how I used the camera and what problems it solved for me, rather than zoomed crops and hunting for chromatic aberrations. That's not to say that the dpreview style of reviews don't have their place - I certainly use it as a starting point for reviews and respect Phil Askey a great deal. But the fact that digital photography has evolved to the point where we can focus more on the ergonomics of the camera and real usability issues rather than nit-picking over image quality is a good thing. It means that camera makes can no longer hide behind the "We have more megapixels than that guy" argument - they'll have to innovate in other ways.
This argument also extends to the audio format war, and ultimately why I get a little irked when people scream that 192 kbps OGG files sound COMPLETELY SUPERIOR to 192 kbps WMA files, or vice-versa. Sure, there will be noticeable differences between a 64 kbps MP3 and a 128 kbps WMA, but once you get to a certain quality level (I'd say anything above 160 kbps), the differences are so small that to most people, it simply doesn't matter. Then other factors come into play that matter more - which format does my audio player use? Which one encodes faster? Which one costs less?
I'd love to hear some feedback from you about this issue, but let's all be brutally honest with ourselves before posting, shall we?
