High resolution and a lot of fine detail. Color balance is slightly yellow, but good results overall.

The extreme tonal range of this image makes it a tough shot for many digicams, which is precisely why I set it up this way, and why I shoot it with no fill flash or reflector to open the shadows. The object is to hold both highlight and shadow detail without producing a "flat" picture with muddy colors, and the DiMAGE G600 handled the did a fairly good job with it.

The shot at right was taken with no exposure compensation adjustment, and the resulting exposure and tonality are almost perfect. The main series was shot using the camera's low contrast and high saturation settings, producing excellent results under the harsh lighting. (Cutting the contrast also cut the color saturation quite a bit, but boosting it back up with the saturation adjustment produced a good-looking image.) I chose the Daylight white balance setting for the series, as it produced a little less color cast than did the Auto setting.

Skin tones are a just slightly more saturated than in real life, but still good, and the blue flowers in the bouquet are almost dead on. (Many digicams have trouble with this blue, but the amount of purple the G600 shows here is very close to their actual color.) The high saturation setting boosts vibrancy throughout the frame, but goes a little too far on the red flowers. Still, overall color and saturation are very good. Resolution is very high, with a lot of fine detail visible throughout the frame. Detail in the shadows is very limited, however, and image noise is quite high there as well.

To view the entire exposure series from -0.3 to +1.0 EV, see files G60OUTLCHSAM1.HTM through G60OUTLCHSAP3.HTM on the thumbnail index page.

Saturation Series:
These series are a little overexposed, but still give a pretty good idea of the G600's range of adjustment. The saturation control offers a very nice range, with fairly fine-grained steps. A nice implementation.

Saturation Series
Lowest	Low	Normal	High	Highest

Contrast Series:
Like the saturation adjustment, the G600's contrast control offers fine steps across a very useful range. At the lower end of the contrast control's adjustment, the camera does a very good job handling even the extreme lighting of this test.

Contrast Series
Lowest	Low	Normal	High	Highest

Excellent resolution and detail, though slightly high contrast.

Color and exposure are similar to the wider shot above, and the G600's 3x zoom lens does a good job preventing distortion of Marti's features. The shot at right was taken with a +0.3 EV exposure compensation adjustment, resulting in fairly bright midtones, but somewhat high contrast. Shot using the G600's Auto white balance option, this image is a bit warmer-toned than the longer shot above. Detail is excellent, with great definition in Marti's hair and face, as well as in the texture of the cloth background.

To view the entire exposure series from -0.3 to +1.0 EV, see files G60FACAM1.HTM through G60FACAP3.HTM on the thumbnail index page.

Normal Flash +0.7 EV

Slow-Sync Flash +0.7 EV

The flash underexposed at its default setting, but a slight boost produced a good exposure. Some yellow cast from the room lighting though.

The G600's built-in flash was quite dim at its default exposure setting, requiring an exposure compensation adjustment of +0.7 EV to get better coverage. (The shot taken at +0.3 EV wasn't much brighter than the default setting.) Overall color is somewhat yellowish, with a trace of an orange cast on Marti's hair from the strong incandescent room lighting. I also shot with the camera's Slow-Sync flash mode, which also required a +0.7 EV exposure compensation boost. (The default exposure had even lighting and coverage, but was quite dark overall.) Because the longer exposure allows more ambient light into the image, the exposure has a stronger orange cast from the background lighting.

Auto White Balance

Incandescent White Balance

Pretty good color with the Incandescent white balance, though still a little red. Very high exposure compensation required though, and some trouble with highlights.

This shot is always a very tough test of a camera's white balance capability, given the strong, yellowish color cast of the household incandescent bulbs used for the lighting. The G600's Auto white balance resulted in a bit more of a yellow cast than I'd like to see, while the Incandescent setting had a lesser red tint. I chose the Incandescent setting for the main series, though the white shirt is reddish and the blue flowers a bit dark and purplish. The shot at right was taken with a +1.7 EV exposure compensation adjustment, quite a bit more than is normally required for this shot. In order to get a bright enough exposure on Marti's features, I had to sacrifice some highlights in the white shirt.

To view the entire exposure series from zero to +1.7 EV, see files G60INTP0.HTM through G60INTP5.HTM on the thumbnail index page.

ISO Series:
Noise is generally low on the G600, somewhat surprising for a 6-megapixel camera in such a compact form factor. While there's some noise present even at ISO 50, the level doesn't escalate too rapidly as ISO is increased, and the noise that does appear is fairly fine-grained. Noise level becomes higher at the 200 and 400 ISO settings, but isn't overly strong. The main issue with the increasing sensitivity level is the bright exposure. As the ISO is increased though, the color saturation drops noticeably, and in this shot under incandescent lighting, high ISO also brings more color cast.

Auto White Balance

Daylight White Balance

Excellent resolution and detail, and nearly accurate color.

The G600's Auto white balance setting did a good job here, producing nearly accurate color and white values with only a hint of a warm cast. The Daylight setting resulted in a warmer cast, though results weren't too bad. Resolution is very high, and detail is strong in the tree limbs, front shrubbery, and house front. (The G600's six-megapixel CCD really stretches the limits of this poster as a test target. Even though the poster was made from a 500MB scan of a 4x5 negative shot with a tack-sharp lens, the G600 extracts almost all of the detail that's to be found here.) Details are also sharp throughout the frame, without any noticeable softness in the corners.

Excellent resolution and detail, with a good dynamic range.

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 is my ultimate "resolution shot," given the infinite range of detail in a natural scene like this, and the G600 does a great job. Leaf patterns are clear and distinct in the tree limbs over the roof, as well as in the fine foliage in front of the house. The brick pattern and house trim also show a lot of fine detail with good clarity. In-camera sharpening does a good job here, with crisp details throughout the frame and little sign of over-sharpening. (And further strong, tight unsharp masking in Photoshop(tm) produces very nice results. - Try 0.3 pixel radius and 150%, for example.) The top right corner of the image shows a little softness, but by and large the G600's images are uniformly sharp across the entire frame. The camera loses some detail in the bright white paint surrounding the bay window, but handles the shadow area above the front door very well. Overall color is good, and exposure is about right. The table below shows a standard resolution and quality series, followed by ISO, saturation, contrast, and color series.

Resolution Series:

ISO Series:

Saturation Series:

Saturation Series
Lowest	Low	Normal	High	Highest

Contrast Series:

Contrast Series
Lowest	Low	Normal	High	Highest

Effects Series:

Effects Series
Black and White	Sepia

Lens Zoom Range

A typical 3x zoom range.

I routinely shoot this series of images to show the field of view for each camera, with the lens at full wide angle, at maximum telephoto (3x, in this case), and at full telephoto with the digital zoom enabled. The G600's lens is equivalent to a 39-117mm zoom on a 35mm camera. That corresponds to a slightly conservative wide angle to a moderate telephoto. Following are the results at each zoom setting.

Auto White Balance

Daylight White Balance

A slight red color cast, but great resolution and detail.

This shot is often a tough test for digicams, as the abundance of blue in the composition frequently tricks white balance systems into producing a warm color balance. The G600's Auto white balance setting did the best job here, despite a slight red cast. (The Daylight setting produced a stronger red cast.) Though the red color cast isn't as strong with the Auto setting, the blue background and robe have purplish tints. Resolution is excellent, as the embroidery of the blue robe and on the red vest show a lot of fine detail. (The original data file for this poster was only 20MB though, so cameras like the G600 are definitely capable of showing more detail than the poster has in it.)

Standard Macro Shot

Macro with Flash

A small macro area with good detail in the dollar bill. Flash performs pretty well, though with some falloff along the bottom of the frame.

The G600 did very well in the macro category, capturing a minimum area of only 1.90 x 1.42 inches (48 x 36 millimeters). Resolution is high, and detail is strong in the dollar bill. However, the coins and brooch are soft due to the very short shooting distance (and probably some softness in the corners as well). As with most digicam macro modes, the image here is fairly soft in the corners, blurring the details of the dollar bill slightly. The G600's flash throttled down very well for the macro area, though its position on the camera is a little high, resulting in a shadow in the lower portion of the frame.

Auto White Balance

Daylight White Balance

Good overall exposure, though a somewhat reddish color cast.

The G600's Auto white balance setting produced warm color here, though results were better than the stronger red cast of the Daylight setting. Exposure is good, maybe a little bright, and the G600 distinguishes the subtle tonal variations of the Q60 target well. Though the large color blocks are a little warm-toned, hue accuracy and saturation are actually pretty good. The G600 for the most part avoids the boosted color saturation that's popular in consumer digicams, but does still really jump up reds and (interestingly) greens. Most other colors are surprisingly accurate for a consumer digicam. Detail is moderate in the shadow area of the charcoal briquettes, and image noise is quite high.


Now, for the REAL technoids, Imatest!

I've recently begun using Norman Koren's excellent "Imatest" analysis program for quantitative, thoroughly objective analysis of digicam test images. For those interested, I've prepared a page summarizing what Imatest showed me about the DiMAGE G600's images.



The results in the tests below mirror those seen above in other test shots. The test series are repeated here without further comment, for the benefit of our more quantitatively-oriented readers.

ISO Series:

Saturation Series:

Saturation Series
Lowest	Low	Normal	High	Highest

Contrast Series:

Contrast Series
Lowest	Low	Normal	High	Highest

Effects Series:

Effects Series
Black and White	Sepia

Low-Light Tests

Pretty good low-light performance, though a slight reddish cast from the dim lighting. Poor autofocus performance in dim light though.

The G600 produced clear, bright, usable images down to the 1/16 foot-candle (0.67 lux) limit of my test, at the ISO 200 and 400 sensitivity settings. At ISOs 50 and 100, images were bright to about 1/4 foot-candle (2.7 lux) and 1/8 foot-candle (1.3 lux) respectively. Color balance was reddish with the Auto white balance, and increased in intensity at the dimmer exposures. Focus is a little soft in many of the shots, as the G600's autofocus system has difficulty with dim lighting. (It can only focus successfully to about two foot-candles, a light level about twice as bright as normal city street lighting.) Noise is fairly low, though it increases at ISOs 200 and 400 (further skewing the color balance). The table below shows the best exposure I was able to obtain for each of a range of illumination levels. Images in this table (like all sample photos) are untouched, exactly as they came from the camera.

(Note: If you'd like to use a light meter to check light levels for subjects you might be interested in shooting, a light level of one foot-candle corresponds to a normal exposure of two seconds at f/2.8 and ISO 100.)

	1 fc 11 lux	1/2 fc 5.5 lux	1/4 fc 2.7 lux	1/8 fc 1.3 lux	1/16 fc 0.67 lux
ISO 50	3.2 sec f2.8	6 sec f2.8	13 sec f2.8	15 sec f2.8	15 sec f2.8
ISO 100	1.6 sec f2.8	3.2 sec f2.8	6 sec f2.8	15 sec f2.8	15 sec f2.8
ISO 200	1/1 sec f2.8	1.6 sec f2.8	3.2 sec f2.8	8 sec f2.8	15 sec f2.8
ISO 400	1/2 sec f2.8	1/1 sec f2.8	1.6 sec f2.8	4 sec f2.8	8 sec f2.8

Flash Range Test

An underpowered flash.

In my testing, the G600's flash underexposed the target even at the minimum 8 foot distance I test from, and its brightness decreased steadily from there on out. (This is unfortunately fairly characteristic of compact digicams, as it's hard to fit big flash capacitors into small camera cases.) Below is the flash range series, with distances from eight to 14 feet from the target.

8 ft	9 ft	10 ft	11 ft	12 ft	13 ft	14 ft
1/100 sec f4.9 ISO 50	1/100 sec f4.9 ISO 50	1/100 sec f4.9 ISO 50	1/100 sec f4.9 ISO 50	1/100 sec f4.9 ISO 50	1/100 sec f4.9 ISO 50	1/100 sec f4.9 ISO 50

ISO-12233 (WG-18) Resolution Test

Excellent resolution, 1,450 lines of "strong detail." Slightly high barrel distortion.

The G600 performed very well on the "laboratory" resolution test chart. It started showing artifacts in the test patterns at resolutions as low as 1,000-1,100 lines per picture height, in both horizontal and vertical directions. I found "strong detail" out to at least 1,450 lines, although some less conservative readers and reviewers might argue for as much as 1,600 lines. "Extinction" of the target patterns didn't occur until about 1,900 lines.

Using its "MTF 50" criteria, Imatest reported average resolution of 1,188 line widths/picture height, or 1,223 LW/PH when normalized to a standard 1-pixel sharpening.

Optical distortion on the G600 is higher than average at the wide-angle end, where I measured approximately 0.9 percent barrel distortion. The telephoto end fared a little better, as I found only 0.2 percent barrel distortion. Chromatic aberration is very low, showing only two to three pixels of moderate coloration on either side of the target lines. (This distortion is visible as a very slight colored fringe around the objects at the edges of the field of view on the resolution target.) The G600's images are also unusually sharp from corner to corner, further evidence of a high-quality lens.

Resolution Series, ~50mm equivalent focal length

Wide Angle	"Fine" JPEG	"Normal" JPEG
2,816 x 2,112	G60RES2816F	G60RES2816N
2,272 x 1,704	G60RES2272	-
1,600 x 1,200	G60RES1600	-
640 x 480	G60RES0640	-

Resolution Test, Wide and Tele

2,816 x 2,112 (Fine, Wide Angle)	G60RESW
2,816 x 2,112 (Fine, Tele)	G60REST

Sharpness Series