Digital Cameras - Olympus D-620L Test Images
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Outdoor portrait: (818k)
This picture shows all the Olympus trademarks, established in the
D-600L, and carried forward to the D-620L as well: High resolution, saturated
colors, and a rather bright, contrasty image. The default
exposure (853k) produced a surprisingly well-exposed
image on this tough subject. (The light background generally causes cameras
to under-expose this shot when using their default settings.) The main image (818k) here was taken with the
exposure compensation set up one f-stop, which brightened the colors, but
lost detail in the shirt and left the skin tones a bit light. The optimum
would probably have been +0.5 f-stops, but the D-620L only provides 1-stop
adjustment increments. (A spot exposure on the left side of the face also
would probably have produced a correct exposure -- the spot metering option
is a very powerful tool that we unfortunately didn't take advantage of here.) |
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Closer portrait: (868k)
With the lens set at the telephoto end of its range, portrait shots
retain proper perspective, a problem for cameras with fixed focal-length
lenses. Very sharp, good tonal range in the default exposure, which we used
as the main image (868k) here. For comparison,
here's a version (835k)
with the exposure set up +1 f-stop. |
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Indoor portrait, flash: (847k) This shot came out slightly dark, but overall color balance was quite good. Areas in shadow from the room light, but illuminated by the flash are a bit bluish, and the background (where the room light is more dominant) is a little warm. Overall a very good performance though. Here's a version (214k) shot in "HQ" mode, that's smaller, and easier to download. The ability to sync with an external flash is a major feature of the
D-620L. This shot (274k)
was taken with the external flash as the primary light source, swamping
the room lighting entirely. (Shot taken in HQ mode.) The flash was bounced
off the ceiling though, producing the very even, natural illumination
you see here. Our flash produced a little less light than the D-620L was
wanting to see, though, so the overall exposure is a bit dark. What great
flexibility relative to strictly on-camera flash though! |
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Indoor portrait, no
flash: (826k) This shot seemed to be toward
the 620's lower limit for producing a well-exposed and color-corrected image.
The main shot here (826k)
was taken with the exposure compensation set up by one f-stop, matching
Mac screen gamma well, but still slightly dark for the PC. Here's
a version (252k) taken with the same exposure,
only in HQ mode, for easier downloading. For comparison, here's
a shot (256k) taken with the default exposure,
also in HQ mode. The auto white balance also left quite a bit of color in
the scene, although it cleans up fairly well with an "auto levels"
in Photoshop, as shown here (293k),
in "HQ" mode. The '620 has a very flexible manual white-balance
control, allowing you to specify the color temperature of the lighting in
degrees Kelvin. Unfortunately for shooters in residential environments like
this, standard household incandescents are quite a bit yellower than the
lowest color-temperature setting of 3000K. This shot
(256k) was taken with the manual color temperature
set to 3000K. (As we'll see below though, the color temperature adjustments
produce very fine color gradations outdoors.) |
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House shot: (845k) Our
standard house poster is one of the toughest tests of overall detail and
resolution in our test suite. The D-620L performs exceptionally well here,
with razor-sharp detail, excellent contrast and tonal range, and very
low shadow noise. Look particularly at the crisp detail in the bricks,
the smooth, noise-free textures in the roof shingles, and the nicely-resolved
detail in the foliage. For this test, we also shot a series of exposures
with the white point set to 5500K, the color temperature of our lights.
Those versions came out with a slightly warmer color cast. (Our assessment
is that the "true" color is about halfway between the two sets
of images from the 620, but as you can see below, both sets look very
good.) For this shot, we've provided a full resolution series (SHQ, HQ,
SQ) for both the manual and automatic white balance settings.
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Far-Field shot: (909k) This image is shot at infinity to test far-field lens performance. NOTE that this image cannot be directly compared to the other "house" shot, which is a poster, shot in the studio. The rendering of detail in the poster will be very different than in this shot, and color values (and even the presence or absence of leaves on the trees!) will vary in this subject as the seasons progress. In general though, you can evaluate detail in the bricks, shingles, and window detail, and in the tree branches against the sky. Compression artifacts are most likely to show in the trim along the edge of the roof, in the bricks, or in the relatively "flat" areas in the windows. This shot shows the D-620L's exceptional resolution again, although the
high contrast that produces such "snappy" images under normal
conditions loses some detail in the strong highlight of the white paint
on the house's front. Not much to look at here color-wise, given the season
(shortly after Christmas, as evidenced by the wreath), but the detail,
resolution, and rather low shadow noise "show" well. The table
below holds links to samples showing the full range of image-quality settings.
We also used this scene to show the effect of the D-620L's fine-grained
manual white balance adjustment. The table below shows samples of images
shot at each white-balance setting. Click on any of the links to see a
640x480 version shot in the camera's SQ mode.
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"Musicians" poster: (912k) The "Musicians" poster shows good color, and
excellent detail. The high contrast of the 620 leaves the flesh tone of
the Caucasian model a bit washed out, but hard to fault the picture in
any other significant aspect. In this test, we often look at the pattern
of fine silver threads on the Oriental model's right shoulder: The 620
shows them much more clearly than most cameras have. Here again, we not
only shot pictures across the full range of quality settings, but with
both automatic and manual white balance settings as well.
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Macro shot: (934k)
Olympus rates the closest focusing distance of the D-620L as about 12 inches
(0.3 m). In our own testing though, we found that it could actually focus
quite well down to as little as 9 inches, capturing an area as small as
2.8 x 3.5 inches (7.2 x 9.0 cm). Here's a version
(309k) shot in "HQ" mode for a faster download.
Although we didn't save a copy to show here, the flash also worked quite
well down to the minimum focusing distance, providing surprisingly even
illumination. |
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"Davebox" test target: (308k) Color rendition in our "Davebox" test is exceptional: Highly saturated colors are captured in all their glory, yet more-subdued tones display naturally as well. The delicate pastels of the Q60 target at bottom center are preserved all the way to row "B." The D-620's high contrast appears to affect the upper end of the tonal range more than the lower: Although the brightness difference between steps "A" and "1" of the large Kodak gray scale is fairly minimal, separation of the shadow values is preserved all the way down to between steps 17 and 18 of the scale. Likewise, there's a great amount of detail available in the charcoal bricks at bottom, if you dig for it in Photoshop. A very impressive performance. Here again, we've provided samples of the full range of image quality, shot with both automatic and manual white balance settings.
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ISO 12233 ("WG-18") resolution target: (848k) (Technoids only) Vertical and horizontal resolution both come out to about 600-650 line pairs per picture height. Some of the secret of the D-620L's "snap" in the fine details is evident in the slightly greater degree of color aliasing it shows on the high-frequency portions of this chart. (For the real techno-geeks out there, it looks to us like Oly's optics are apparently sharp enough to deliver detail to the CCD at greater than the Nyquist frequency.) Speaking of optics, the lens looks very good, but does have a slight barrel distortion at the wide-angle setting, and a very slight pincushion distortion at the telephoto end. (Interestingly, Olympus' revamped Camedia interface program includes a built-in pincushion/barrel-distortion correction tool.) The table below contains links for the full range of image-quality settings, at both telephoto and wide-angle lens focal lengths.
Telephoto
Wide-Angle
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Viewfinder accuracy/flash uniformity target: The Single-Lens
Reflex (SLR) design of the '620 provides very accurate framing, even with
auxiliary lenses attached to the front of the camera lens. In our tests,
we measured viewfinder coverage at a much better-than-average value of 95%
of the final image area, throughout the lens' zoom range. Flash uniformity
was very good as well, providing almost perfectly even illumination in telephoto
mode (190k), and only a slight variation at the
wide angle end of the zoom range. (197k)
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