Olympus Stylus XZ-10 Samples

The crops below show the performance of the Olympus XZ-10 next to the same ISO for the Nikon Coolpix P310
Nikon Coolpix P310. These are rather compact advanced fixed-lens digital cameras with dual-control-dials to operate their manual-controls efficiently. The P310 uses a slightly larger sensor but its dim is much dimmer towards the long end.

All images below are 100% crops from their respective camera taken at the highest image quality JPEG setting available. ISO, aperture and white-balance were set on camera. Other settings were left at their default values. These crops help determine which ISO settings is acceptable 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.

Olympus XZ-10	Nikon Coolpix P310
ISO 100	ISO 100
ISO 200	ISO 200
ISO 400	ISO 400
ISO 800	ISO 800
ISO 1600	ISO 1600
ISO 3200	ISO 3200
ISO 6400	ISO 6400

Looks like Olympus and Nikon here chose completely different approaches to image processing. These small sensor are rather noisy but Olympus applies strong noise-reduction for slower shutter-speeds. This is why the ISO 100 to 400 shots are softer than the 800+ ones while the Nikon shows a more intuitive progression.

Image quality crosses at ISO 800 where the Stylus XZ-10 does better despite a smaller sensor. Although noise is clearly present and potential print sizes reduced at that point. They do remain usable up to ISO 1600 which is expected of a modern camera. The ace of the XZ-10 of course is its ultra-bright lens which give it an edge above typical compact models.