outdoor scene

The zoom lenses of each camera were adjusted to deliver the same field of view; the Panasonic FX30 crops show a larger field due to its lower resolution.

The image left was taken with the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W200 at 9mm f6.3 and with a sensitivity of 100 ISO; the original JPEG measured 3.44MB. The crops are taken from the top left, centre and lower right areas.

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W200 has a big resolution advantage over the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX30 – almost five Megapixels difference – but does that translate into greater detail in practice? See below…

The first thing to notice is the Sony W200’s lens in the far top left corner is suffering from several optical issues which prevent it from delivering a sharp result – so any extra detail there is effectively lost. Moving onto the second crop taken from the middle of the frame, it’s clear the W200 is applying greater sharpening and contrast than the Panasonic FX30, but even then, there is definitely a little more detail visible in the Sony result. Revealingly it’s also not suffering from the soft and slightly noisy output of the FX30, even when the Panasonic’s set to its lowest ISO.

The third and final crops taken from the lower right portion of the originals show both cameras suffering from optical softness and also some digital issues which contribute to a lack of detail, especially in foliage areas. That said in the areas which are clear, the W200 is capturing more detail, and as we’ll see in our studio resolution, outdoor noise and gallery pages, the W200 really can resolve a great deal compared to other compacts. It’s just a shame the lens isn’t as well-corrected as it could be.

Note: the Panasonic FX30 automatically selected an aperture of f9 in this example, which could contribute to a lack of ultimate sharpness, but since there’s no manual control over this, we believe it’s still a fair comparison with the Sony under typical ‘automatic’ conditions. Now let’s move onto the W200 resolution results.