Mar 30, 2005, 13:04
Today I walked into a local camera store armed with my old Olympus C750UZ camera and a spare CF card.
I asked the salesman if I could use my CF card in a Canon 350D and take some test shots with it to take away and compare to the same shots taken with my C750, to which he agreed.
The point of this exercise was not to see if the 350D was better than the C750 (I would've been shocked if it wasn't), but to give me a "proper" feel for the camera by actually taking photos with it instead of simply holding a camera with no battery in it (previous salespeople haven't allowed me to switch it on) and to be able to compare the images with a known benchmark - my trusty old Olympus C750 that I've been using for a couple of years and know inside-out.
I've read all the 350D reviews, I know the specs inside out, I've used a 300D and knew the 350D would be similar, I've held a model with no battery in it, but I still needed to actually *use* the camera to settle the indicision inside of me.
So I took some very ordinary photos from inside the camera shop. The lighting was terrible; quite dark inside with a big window and loads of light outside - but in some ways that was good as it would highlight some of the problems with both cameras. I was there to find potential problems, not take pretty photos.
I'll briefly go through my impressions of the camera:
1) As soon as i picked it up, I thought "wow, this just feels right." The size and weight is perfect for me. It is about the same size as my old EOS 300 film SLR from memory, and a little bit heavier but not much. I remember the first time I picked up a 300D and I thought it felt too big and too light for its size. The 350D feels much better for me, but I know this is a very subjective thing.
2) The plastic finish feels fine. I was using a silver one (and apparently the black versions have a slightly different finish), but it didn't feel cheap and nasty at all. I had just put down my all-metal C750 to pick up this camera, and if anything the 350D felt more secure and nicer in my hands (mainly because the shape fitted my hands better than the lunchbox-shaped Olympus I guess, but the material did not detract at all).
3) Control placement is good, but not perfect for me. The control wheel is a little too far from the shutter button, and the two thumb buttons aren't ideally placed for me... but they aren't bad and won't take long to become second-nature. The four-way directional buttons on the back could stick out a bit more and maybe be moved a bit to make using them while your eye is against the viewfinder a bit easier, but I still found it quite usable.
4) The viewfinder is fine for me. Apparently it is smaller than the 300D, and seems to be one of the biggest gripes with this camera. But it seemed big enough (though certainly not large) and bright enough. Certainly after just looking through the EVF on the C750 it is chalk and cheese and I won't even dignify the C750 EVF by comparing to a DSLR viewfinder.
5) Autofocus is quick and quiet, and all camera operations are sharp, precise and seemed to be just as fast as a film SLR. There's no point comparing the C750 to the 350D here, as it is like comparing a pedal-car to an F1 race car. Needless to say I was left staring at my C750 with a sad expression and slowly shaking my head. Poor old thing.
6) Shutter sound was a nice little thunk that reminded me of my EOS 300 film SLR. Discrete but decisive. I don't see this as a big deal unless the shutter sounds like a squarking parrot or train or gunshot or something rediculous... but it doesn't.. it sounds like a camera should sound. Not silent, but not noisy either.
7) Shutter-lag, write times and general speed and responsiveness were all pants-wettingly good compared to my C750. This thing is fast. The only time it kept me waiting was when I was reviewing my images and I pressed a few buttons lots of times in succession. It "buffered" the keystrokes and seemed to lock up for about 4 seconds while it was trying to catch up with the button-presses (I was flicking through photos). I didn't like this; If I press the "next" button 5 times quickly, it should know I want to skip 5 photos and shouldn't have to show every photo in between.
8) Menus looked easy to understand and easy to navigate. The LCD screen is nice and bright and sharp, and having the monochrome LCD screen on the back instead of the top seems sensible to me.
The choice of grey text on black for menu items in the main LCD screen has been criticized for being difficult to see in bright light, and I could believe this. Indoors it was fine, but I could imagine it might be a problem on a bright day outside.
And finally... the images!
Well, I really only had a chance to do two proper comparisons. The first was with both cameras on "full auto" and taking approximately the same scene. The second was with both cameras on "Aperture Priority" and set to 100 ISO. Note that I made a slight error in this test and accidently set the aperture to f/5.0 for the C750 and f/5.6 for the 350D, but they are close enough not to make much difference.
Below is a small 100% crop from the "Auto" comparison. The image on the left is from the C750, the one on the right from the 350D.
![[Image: FullAuto.jpg]](http://www.shuttertalk.com/forums/images/upload/FullAuto.jpg)
At first glance, the C750 seems to hold up really quite well against the 350D. It isn't disgraced, and performed better than I was expecting, and in fact the C750 image seems a bit sharper than the 350D image. But... There is less noise in the 350D image, the colours are a bit more saturated, the shadows not quite so dim, and the brick wall outside the window not so blown-out (ie it makes better use of its dynamic range).
But upon closer inspection, it can be seen that the C750 uses an in-camera unsharp mask or equivalent to sharpen its images (even though I have sharpness set at 0), the C750 image has purple finging (although the 350D seems to have some red fringing)... But the Exif data really highlights the most important difference as far as I'm concerned.
The 350D image was ISO 400, f/6.3 and 1/125sec shutter.
The C750 image was ISO 50, f/3.5 and 1/60sec shutter.
That's right folks, the C750 cranked its ISO down THREE stops to get a comparable image in terms of noise-levels, and even then it still wasn't as good as the 350D at a relatively noisy setting of 400. In fact, I'd guess the difference would be closer to four stops as I've seen 800 ISO images from a 350D that have barely more noise than the 400 ISO image. I take the vast majority of photos on my C750 at ISO 50. I can now take those same photos at ISO 800 and get four extra stops of light to play with and still get comparable noise levels! indoor shots, wildlife and sports photography are going to be so much easier with this camera.
Having said that, It also shows the Olympus Auto mode is actually pretty good at getting the best result it can from the camera.
So.. what do these same photos look like when both cameras are forced to ISO 100?
I'm glad you asked....
![[Image: Av.jpg]](http://www.shuttertalk.com/forums/images/upload/Av.jpg)
C750 Image on the left is ISO 100, f/5, 1/60sec shutter speed. 350D Image on the right is ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/30sec shutter speed. Both are 100% crops from a much larger image.
hmmm... Apart from the auto mode on the Olympus deciding it didn't need as much light as the 350D (remember these are crops of a much bigger image, and the camera exposed for the whole image not just what is visible here), this starts to make the differences more obvious.
Noise has disappeared almost completely from the 350D image, but clearly increased on the C750. The saturation in the shadows also seems worse in this shot, but that may simply be because the shot is less exposed than the 350D shot.
But... again the C750 image does seem sharper than the 350D. Although I suspect this difference is mainly due to software sharpening in the Olympus, I do think the EF-S 18-55 kit lens with the 350D is a litle soft. These images could be sharper with a better lens IMHO.
Conclusions?
Well... No real surprises, but after all the hype about the low-noise of Canon sensors I was hoping for even less noise than these results show. But I guess that was a bit of wishful thinking. Anything at ISO 100 is drop-dead gorgeous. The step-up from my C750 is clear and I know I won't be disappointed.
The EF-S 18-55 lens seems to be a bit softer than I was expecting as I had heard reasonably good things about it (not that I think it is bad), and there seemed to be a bit of CA in high contrast areas.... but considering the cost of the kit lens, you can't expect the world of it. There's a chance that the softness in the 2nd 350D image is caused by some camera-shake, as the shutter speed was 1/30 sec. But I doubt this would have affected the 1st 350D image which used 1/125sec, yet both images appear soft.
If this lens in an indication of the kind of quality I could expect from, say the 75-300 IS USM, then I'm glad I cancelled that lens and ordered the 70-200 L f/4 USM instead. The sharpness of the kit lens was acceptable, but I want really sharp. I can certainly see myself falling in love with the 70-200 f/4 L lens if it is as good as some of the sample shots seem to show it to be. I can also see myself replacing the kit lens sometime in the future.
I was quite satisfied with the feel, surface, size and weight of the camera. I see no reason why I would choose something like a D20 over the 350D because of its physical attributes (possibly for other reasons though). In fact the size and shape fitted my hands really nicely.
I LOVED the speed and operation. This alone is a good reason to dump my Oly in favour of a DSLR.
Oh.. and 8 megapixels in the 350D is always a better thing than the 4mp in the Olympus, especially when they are such lovely pixels! Granted that I don't often print larger than 8x10", but I do tend to rely on cropping in photoshop to compose my images, so the extra pixels will be a real bonus there.
Note: I took those photos so that at 100% crop the elements in the image would be roughly the same size. Because the C750 is a 4mp camera and the 350D is an 8mp camera, this meant that looking at the whole image from the 350D reveals a wider angle. Coincidently, this relationship almost exactly matched the minimum focal length of both lenses - 28mm (equiv) for the 350D and 38mm (equiv) for the C750.
Below are scaled down versions of the whole images used in the second example above to give you an idea how much "extra" you get around the edges of the image by reducing that extra 10mm of focal length.
From the C750:
![[Image: AvC750.jpg]](http://www.shuttertalk.com/forums/images/upload/AvC750.jpg)
From the 350D:
![[Image: Av350D.jpg]](http://www.shuttertalk.com/forums/images/upload/Av350D.jpg)
I asked the salesman if I could use my CF card in a Canon 350D and take some test shots with it to take away and compare to the same shots taken with my C750, to which he agreed.
The point of this exercise was not to see if the 350D was better than the C750 (I would've been shocked if it wasn't), but to give me a "proper" feel for the camera by actually taking photos with it instead of simply holding a camera with no battery in it (previous salespeople haven't allowed me to switch it on) and to be able to compare the images with a known benchmark - my trusty old Olympus C750 that I've been using for a couple of years and know inside-out.
I've read all the 350D reviews, I know the specs inside out, I've used a 300D and knew the 350D would be similar, I've held a model with no battery in it, but I still needed to actually *use* the camera to settle the indicision inside of me.
So I took some very ordinary photos from inside the camera shop. The lighting was terrible; quite dark inside with a big window and loads of light outside - but in some ways that was good as it would highlight some of the problems with both cameras. I was there to find potential problems, not take pretty photos.
I'll briefly go through my impressions of the camera:
1) As soon as i picked it up, I thought "wow, this just feels right." The size and weight is perfect for me. It is about the same size as my old EOS 300 film SLR from memory, and a little bit heavier but not much. I remember the first time I picked up a 300D and I thought it felt too big and too light for its size. The 350D feels much better for me, but I know this is a very subjective thing.
2) The plastic finish feels fine. I was using a silver one (and apparently the black versions have a slightly different finish), but it didn't feel cheap and nasty at all. I had just put down my all-metal C750 to pick up this camera, and if anything the 350D felt more secure and nicer in my hands (mainly because the shape fitted my hands better than the lunchbox-shaped Olympus I guess, but the material did not detract at all).
3) Control placement is good, but not perfect for me. The control wheel is a little too far from the shutter button, and the two thumb buttons aren't ideally placed for me... but they aren't bad and won't take long to become second-nature. The four-way directional buttons on the back could stick out a bit more and maybe be moved a bit to make using them while your eye is against the viewfinder a bit easier, but I still found it quite usable.
4) The viewfinder is fine for me. Apparently it is smaller than the 300D, and seems to be one of the biggest gripes with this camera. But it seemed big enough (though certainly not large) and bright enough. Certainly after just looking through the EVF on the C750 it is chalk and cheese and I won't even dignify the C750 EVF by comparing to a DSLR viewfinder.
5) Autofocus is quick and quiet, and all camera operations are sharp, precise and seemed to be just as fast as a film SLR. There's no point comparing the C750 to the 350D here, as it is like comparing a pedal-car to an F1 race car. Needless to say I was left staring at my C750 with a sad expression and slowly shaking my head. Poor old thing.
6) Shutter sound was a nice little thunk that reminded me of my EOS 300 film SLR. Discrete but decisive. I don't see this as a big deal unless the shutter sounds like a squarking parrot or train or gunshot or something rediculous... but it doesn't.. it sounds like a camera should sound. Not silent, but not noisy either.
7) Shutter-lag, write times and general speed and responsiveness were all pants-wettingly good compared to my C750. This thing is fast. The only time it kept me waiting was when I was reviewing my images and I pressed a few buttons lots of times in succession. It "buffered" the keystrokes and seemed to lock up for about 4 seconds while it was trying to catch up with the button-presses (I was flicking through photos). I didn't like this; If I press the "next" button 5 times quickly, it should know I want to skip 5 photos and shouldn't have to show every photo in between.
8) Menus looked easy to understand and easy to navigate. The LCD screen is nice and bright and sharp, and having the monochrome LCD screen on the back instead of the top seems sensible to me.
The choice of grey text on black for menu items in the main LCD screen has been criticized for being difficult to see in bright light, and I could believe this. Indoors it was fine, but I could imagine it might be a problem on a bright day outside.
And finally... the images!
Well, I really only had a chance to do two proper comparisons. The first was with both cameras on "full auto" and taking approximately the same scene. The second was with both cameras on "Aperture Priority" and set to 100 ISO. Note that I made a slight error in this test and accidently set the aperture to f/5.0 for the C750 and f/5.6 for the 350D, but they are close enough not to make much difference.
Below is a small 100% crop from the "Auto" comparison. The image on the left is from the C750, the one on the right from the 350D.
At first glance, the C750 seems to hold up really quite well against the 350D. It isn't disgraced, and performed better than I was expecting, and in fact the C750 image seems a bit sharper than the 350D image. But... There is less noise in the 350D image, the colours are a bit more saturated, the shadows not quite so dim, and the brick wall outside the window not so blown-out (ie it makes better use of its dynamic range).
But upon closer inspection, it can be seen that the C750 uses an in-camera unsharp mask or equivalent to sharpen its images (even though I have sharpness set at 0), the C750 image has purple finging (although the 350D seems to have some red fringing)... But the Exif data really highlights the most important difference as far as I'm concerned.
The 350D image was ISO 400, f/6.3 and 1/125sec shutter.
The C750 image was ISO 50, f/3.5 and 1/60sec shutter.
That's right folks, the C750 cranked its ISO down THREE stops to get a comparable image in terms of noise-levels, and even then it still wasn't as good as the 350D at a relatively noisy setting of 400. In fact, I'd guess the difference would be closer to four stops as I've seen 800 ISO images from a 350D that have barely more noise than the 400 ISO image. I take the vast majority of photos on my C750 at ISO 50. I can now take those same photos at ISO 800 and get four extra stops of light to play with and still get comparable noise levels! indoor shots, wildlife and sports photography are going to be so much easier with this camera.
Having said that, It also shows the Olympus Auto mode is actually pretty good at getting the best result it can from the camera.
So.. what do these same photos look like when both cameras are forced to ISO 100?
I'm glad you asked....
C750 Image on the left is ISO 100, f/5, 1/60sec shutter speed. 350D Image on the right is ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/30sec shutter speed. Both are 100% crops from a much larger image.
hmmm... Apart from the auto mode on the Olympus deciding it didn't need as much light as the 350D (remember these are crops of a much bigger image, and the camera exposed for the whole image not just what is visible here), this starts to make the differences more obvious.
Noise has disappeared almost completely from the 350D image, but clearly increased on the C750. The saturation in the shadows also seems worse in this shot, but that may simply be because the shot is less exposed than the 350D shot.
But... again the C750 image does seem sharper than the 350D. Although I suspect this difference is mainly due to software sharpening in the Olympus, I do think the EF-S 18-55 kit lens with the 350D is a litle soft. These images could be sharper with a better lens IMHO.
Conclusions?
Well... No real surprises, but after all the hype about the low-noise of Canon sensors I was hoping for even less noise than these results show. But I guess that was a bit of wishful thinking. Anything at ISO 100 is drop-dead gorgeous. The step-up from my C750 is clear and I know I won't be disappointed.
The EF-S 18-55 lens seems to be a bit softer than I was expecting as I had heard reasonably good things about it (not that I think it is bad), and there seemed to be a bit of CA in high contrast areas.... but considering the cost of the kit lens, you can't expect the world of it. There's a chance that the softness in the 2nd 350D image is caused by some camera-shake, as the shutter speed was 1/30 sec. But I doubt this would have affected the 1st 350D image which used 1/125sec, yet both images appear soft.
If this lens in an indication of the kind of quality I could expect from, say the 75-300 IS USM, then I'm glad I cancelled that lens and ordered the 70-200 L f/4 USM instead. The sharpness of the kit lens was acceptable, but I want really sharp. I can certainly see myself falling in love with the 70-200 f/4 L lens if it is as good as some of the sample shots seem to show it to be. I can also see myself replacing the kit lens sometime in the future.
I was quite satisfied with the feel, surface, size and weight of the camera. I see no reason why I would choose something like a D20 over the 350D because of its physical attributes (possibly for other reasons though). In fact the size and shape fitted my hands really nicely.
I LOVED the speed and operation. This alone is a good reason to dump my Oly in favour of a DSLR.
Oh.. and 8 megapixels in the 350D is always a better thing than the 4mp in the Olympus, especially when they are such lovely pixels! Granted that I don't often print larger than 8x10", but I do tend to rely on cropping in photoshop to compose my images, so the extra pixels will be a real bonus there.
Note: I took those photos so that at 100% crop the elements in the image would be roughly the same size. Because the C750 is a 4mp camera and the 350D is an 8mp camera, this meant that looking at the whole image from the 350D reveals a wider angle. Coincidently, this relationship almost exactly matched the minimum focal length of both lenses - 28mm (equiv) for the 350D and 38mm (equiv) for the C750.
Below are scaled down versions of the whole images used in the second example above to give you an idea how much "extra" you get around the edges of the image by reducing that extra 10mm of focal length.
From the C750:
From the 350D:
and it's a lot lot cheaper than here.