Canon PowerShot A640
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Written by Gordon Laing
Outdoor scene - Canon A640 vs Fujifilm F30 vs Sony N2
Canon PowerShot A640 |
Fujifilm FinePix F30 |
Sony Cybershot DSC-N2 | ||
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1/640, f4, 100 ISO |
1/640, f4, 100 ISO |
1/800, f4.5, 100 ISO | ||
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1/640, f4, 100 ISO |
1/640, f4, 100 ISO |
1/800, f4.5, 100 ISO | ||
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1/640, f4, 100 ISO |
1/640, f4, 100 ISO |
1/800, f4.5, 100 ISO |
| The PowerShot A640 crops above look a little soft compared to the Sony N2, although the latter is clearly applying much greater sharpening with undesirable artefacts as a consequence in certain areas, such as the buildings in the second row. Even with lower sharpening taken into account though, the Canon A640 is slightly soft in its corners, but it’s nothing to be overly concerned about. It delivers very pleasing, natural-looking results out of the camera which can be boosted in software later if desired. Finally, it’s interesting to also compare the detail captured by the 10 Megapixel Canon and Sony against the 6.3 Megapixel Fujifilm – it’s not as great a difference as you might imagine, and the fewer pixels of the Fujifilm sensor also provides benefits at higher sensitivities. |
Outdoor / Resolution / Noise / Noise 2 / Corner sharpness / Fringe & macro / Geometry / Vignetting
To compare real-life performance we shot the same scene with the Canon A640, Fujifilm F30 and Sony N2 within a few moments of each other using their best quality JPEG settings and 100 ISO sensitivity. Each camera was set to Auto and multi-zone metering for this test to compare how the same scene would be evaluated.
Each lens was adjusted to deliver the same field of view, although differences in their actual zoom positions resulted in slight variations. The Fujifilm result also shows a larger area due to its lower resolution sensor.
The image above was taken with the Canon PowerShot A640 at 10mm f4 and with a sensitivity of 100 ISO; the original JPEG measured 4.89MB.
The crops are taken from the upper left, center and lower right portions of the originals and presented here at 100%.
