Below are sample crops from an indoor photograph of a book-cover at each of the Olympus Stylus 1030SW's ISO settings. When available, a crop from the Fuji Finepix F50SE at the same ISO setting is shown next to the Olympus 1030SW's crop. These are both ultra-compact cameras with automatic controls. However, the Fuji Finepix F50SE is not rugged at all and does not feature a wide-angle lens.
Images below are all unmodified 100% crops from their respective cameras. The ISO and white-balance were set on camera but exposure was fully automatic, not that there is a choice on the Olympus. The Fuji does not have a manual mode either but does have shutter-priority and aperture-priority modes.
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. |
The Olympus Stylus 1030SW shows steady increase of noise at each ISO setting, with pronounced noise in the blue channel. It also seems that the Olympus is over-sharpening its image after applying noise reduction. The result is that the image appears to stay relatively sharp even at high-ISO but halos start forming near edges. Another thing to notice is that the Olympus washes-out in the shadow areas, creating an image with less contrast than its neighbor. Comparatively, the Fuji F50 produces an image which is more usable at least 2 stops ahead of the Stylus 1030SW. White-balance was also more accurate on the Fuji than on the Olympus, which suffers from poor white-balance under artificial lighting. Nothing can be done here because the Olympus does not have custom white-balance either.
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