More Photographic Tests

My last post was about Dirk’s new camera. Well today we took a half day to test it out. We had planned the date two days ago, when we woke up this morning, it was pouring rain. Since we are members of Kew, and it five minutes away, I grabbed a visitor pass and we headed over to take some pictures in the Palm House and Temperate House.

Our plan was to take three pictures of each subject at three common aperture settings, and allow the camera to adjust the shutter speed. Unfortunately, the light was severely limited and uneven. So we ended up taking three pictures of each subject in three aperture settings that were reasonable. The goal was really to test depth of field. I also brought my point and shoot cameral along to compare.

The first thing I should mention… it is very hard to see the difference online (specially in the thumbnails, so open them up). On top of that, I had to reduced these images to either 900x600 or 800x600 which pretty much hides a lot of the detail on the better camera; however, the difference is very real. Not only can you print up to A3 (legal paper) size images, but the depth of field really is superior. I also think the colors are far more true.

Basically we need to do another sunny day test to get better, more even results, but you can see the difference plainly.

I have picked three photos which show the differences between the high-end Cannon and the point-in-shoot Panasonic. If I can, I will get an example of the three aperture settings next.

Canon	Panasonic
Short Distance Test
Medium Distance Test
Long Distance Test