Canon Powershot SD1200 IS Samples

The crops below show the performance of the Canon Powershot SD1200 next to the same ISO for the Fuji Finepix F200 EXR. For point-and-shoot cameras such as these, getting shots of a scene under fixed lighting conditions at all ISO settings is exercise in tricking the cameras. As can be seen below, such low-lit scene could not always be properly exposed at all ISO settings. Outside of camera testing, this is not really an issue as you only need to get the right exposure at a reasonable ISO.

All crops below are 100% from their respective camera taken at the highest image quality setting available. Aside for the scene-mode used for the Fuji's ISO 100 shot, all other settings were left on automatic or on their default values. 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 point at which a print become unacceptably noisy is a matter of personal taste.

Canon Powershot SD1200	Fuji Finepix F200 EXR
ISO 80
ISO 100	ISO 100
ISO 200	ISO 200
ISO 400	ISO 400
ISO 800	ISO 800
ISO 1600	ISO 1600
The Canon Powershot SD1200 struggles with keeping details and low noise as ISO increases. Each ISO gets progressively softer and this is even noticeable at ISO 100. Canon manages to keep images smooth like this until ISO 400. By 800 noise dominates. Comparatively, the Fuji's performance is stellar with at least 2 stops advantage over the Canon. With the F200, even ISO 800 is usable for most print sizes, something that cannot be said for the SD1200.	ISO 3200