5 Megapixels for < $300: Kodak DX4530, Olympus C-50 Zoom, Casio QV-R51
by Stephen Caston on July 15, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Digital Camera
Noise
The noise test consists of pictures of our studio shot taken at increasing ISO levels to show the effect on the image. Because the Kodak 4530 did not have an option to adjust the ISO setting, we had to leave it out of the table below. All pictures were taken after resetting the cameras to their factory default settings. They were set to record in the highest quality JPG mode.| Olympus C-50 Zoom (Auto WB) | Casio QV-R51 (Manual WB) | ||
| ISO 80 |  Click to enlarge. |
ISO 50 |  Click to enlarge. |
| ISO 160 |  Click to enlarge. |
ISO 100 |  Click to enlarge. |
| ISO 320 |  Click to enlarge. |
ISO 200 |  Click to enlarge. |
| ISO 400 |  Click to enlarge. |
ISO 50 on the QV-R51 is quite a bit clearer with less noise than ISO 80 on the Olympus C-50 Zoom. The Olympus showed very little increase in noise from ISO 80 to 160. The difference is just a bit of added graininess. At ISO 320, the image is still usable, but has a very grainy appearance. The Casio showed very little noise up to ISO 200. At ISO 400, the noise is very bad and makes the image almost unusable.
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LX - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
A review of digicams on AnandTech is like a review of CPUs on dpreview or a review of motherboards on imaging-resource.Choosing digicams for comparison based on their pixel count is like comparing CPUs based on their MHz.
Please stick to your field of competence!
Mermaidman - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
What next? A review of the new and improved ROOMBA robot vacuum? :preljam - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
This review was really below the 'Anandtech standard'. The comments posted above are all valid, but you completely forgot to do indoor tests.Cameras (especially small ones) suffer from not being able to produce a sharp image in low light conditions. Taking three shots outdoors, even on a cloudy day is going to give you decent results 90% of the time. If you want to see noise, try taking indoor shots with the flash on. In indoor shots flash range becomes very important (portrait-only flash is unacceptable), and the amount of noise in the background is something that's a very real problem.
Your testing methodology is roughly like taking a Celeron, a P IV and and AMD64 and running IE page rendering tests - yes, there may be differences, but that's not the distinguishing feature.
nigham - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
I think the review was done fairly well - though I am disappointed to say that at the end of it, I'm certainly not going to buy any of these things. All of them sure seem to have a few problems.physologically speaking, the best feeling i get after an anandtech article is when i really feel - hey i should actually go ahead and buy this thing... zilch of that here.
so what you probably need is to review all of these along with some really good cameras (and i'm sure they're out there - having used a DSC-P93 i can say that the picture quality is definitely better than the pics i've seen in this review).
if price range is your method of choosing "similar" cameras, i'd agree with SKiller and say go ahead and include 3/4 mp cameras if they've got much better quality, alongside the 5 mp ones, and let us make the choice of what we want to pay for. personally i can't for the life of me think what i'd ever do with a 2500x2000 pixel image.
i think for a first effort in the humanly-priced cameras, this was OK and i'm sure you guys will only keep getting better.
EddNog - Friday, July 16, 2004 - link
I say screw it and just buy a Canon. ;-Pianmills - Thursday, July 15, 2004 - link
ahahaha:)
WooDaddy - Thursday, July 15, 2004 - link
This is a TOTAL waste of time. Let me count the ways:1) All of the pages were direct testing method rips from dpreview.
2) THE CAMERAS ALL CAME FROM DIFFERENT YEARS (development cycles)!!! 2002, 2003, 2004?!? COME ON!! If you are going to have a comparision, compare cameras built within the same time frame! Do you think Anand, Wesley or Kris would attempt to do an apples to apples direct comparo on CPUs that were three years apart!?! NO!
3) WTF is with this conclusion!? THERE IS NO ADDED VALUE TO ALL THAT TESTING YOU DID! If you realized that those cameras weren't similar enough, the review should've stopped. The only difference you could find was price!? All Anandtech readers should feel insulted by that.
4) What was the basis for choosing these cameras?When CPU or Mobo comparision are done, they are done with products that are marketed to be similar. I didn't see the logic in choosing these three.. as a matter of fact, no reasoning was given at all.
Lastly, Anand, Kris, or whoever senior editors.. I am disappointed in YOU more so than anyone else. Don't you review the articles posted? Virtually every single article that you've posted in the years have had relevance, structure, in-depth conclusion, value-added information to bring upon very educated purchasing decisions. Two hiccups back to back like this is horrible. You've done research, so research what makes a good digital camera review... NO! Consider your purpose first. Anandtech is not a digital camera review site. That is such a large genre and almost completely separate from IT-based products. It's like going to McDonalds and not only asking and getting a filet mignon, but then expecting it to be as good ...
To slightly calm down, I don't believe that Anandtech is the appropiate forum for articles like this. I also didn't think the review represented the quality and in-depth nature of the majority of the reviews here. I believe the attempt add digital cameras to the review list is showing that the genre of the website is starting to lose its direction. Anandtech is a IT and consumer level PC product review site, not a general blog, review everything website. Digital cameras have links to this world but are not a subset.
WooDaddy - Thursday, July 15, 2004 - link
Look.......
I'm really pissed about this. Let me calm down and post later...
SKiller - Thursday, July 15, 2004 - link
5mp cameras at this price range are still not a very good option IMHO. They tend to sacrifice quality and features for the added resolution. I think that 3-4mp cameras at this price can give much better results unless you absolutely have to have 5mp.I'd consider Canon PowerShot A75, A80, Fujifilm FinePix F601Z, Kodak DX6340, and Samsung Digimax V4 from the "more advanced features" category.
Good review though.