Olympus Stylus 7010 Comparative Crops

Below are sample crops from an indoor photograph at each of the Olympus Stylus 7010's ISO settings. A crop from the Fuji Finepix F200EXR at the same ISO setting is shown too. The Fuji is currently the image quality champion of ultra-compact cameras and it is much more sophisticated than the Olympus, yet it is interesing to see how these compare.

Images below are all unmodified 100% crops from their respective cameras. The ISO was set on camera and WB and exposure was on automatic, not that there is a choice on the Olympus. As seen below the Olympus produces incorrectly tinted image under the scene's lighting.

These crops help determine which ISO settings can be acceptably used on these cameras. As noise increases, most cameras compensate with noise reduction which introduces softness. The result is that, while you can partly reduce noise at the expense of details, the maximum acceptable print size gets smaller as ISO is increased. The point at which a print become unacceptably noisy is a matter of personal taste.

Olympus Stylus 7010	Fuji Finepix F200 EXR
ISO 64 - Underexposed
ISO 100 - Scene mode	ISO 100
ISO 200	ISO 200
ISO 400	ISO 400
ISO 800	ISO 800
ISO 1600	ISO 1600

While both cameras increase noise steadily at each ISO, the Fuji Finepix F200EXR keeps an advantage of roughly 2 stops in terms of noise and sharpness. On the Olympus Stylus Stylus 7010, ISO 800 is quite noisy but still usable for small prints.