Digital
Cameras - Agfa ePhoto 1680 Test Images
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Outdoor portrait:
(1,316k!)The 1680 did an excellent job on this
tough, high-contrast subject. As do most cameras, the 1680 produced a rather
dark image (539k) with its
default exposure setting, due to the large bright area this subject contains.
Two steps up the EV-adjustment scale produced the main shot here, a nicely-exposed
image with high resolution, excellent color and good detail in both highlights
and shadows.
This scene also shows one of the significant benefits of the PhotoGenie
processing. This image (555k),
taken in 1680 mode, but not processed through PhotoGenie shows slight
but noticeable "jaggies" around the edges of the blue flowers.
The same shot, with the PhotoGenie processing applied
(1,316k!, our main shot for this category)
shows no trace of this artifact. The ePhoto 1680 produces such large images in its highest-quality mode,
that we're including the following images, which were re-saved in Photoshop,
at a greater compression level. These will let you evaluate the color
rendition, without waiting 20 minutes for the download on a slow modem!
NOTE though, that these images will show JPEG artifacts which aren't the
fault of the camera! All that said, here's the main
photo (247k) from above, with the raw 1680-mode
JPEG re-saved with a Photoshop quality setting of "6". |
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Closer portrait:
(1,282k!) The close-up
portrait shot really shows off the resolution capabilities of the 1680.
The main picture here (1,282k!)
was shot with the exposure boosted upward one notch, while this
one (1,244k!) is boosted two. Mac users
may prefer the first, PC users the second, due to differences in display
characteristics between the two systems. The lighter of the two does lose
some detail in the strong highlights of the shirt though, hence our choice
of the darker for the main image. Overall, a very impressive performance! |
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Indoor
portrait, flash: (1,277k!)
The 1680's on-board flash did an excellent job balancing between
room illumination and that from the flash itself. We were particularly impressed
by the absence of odd-colored shadows or highlights, caused by differences
in color temperature between the ambient and flash illumination. (The flash
on many cameras is more daylight-balanced, which produces blue highlights
and reddish shadows when used under incandescent ambient lighting.) To save
viewing time, you might want to try this 1280-mode
version (803k). |
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Indoor
portrait, no flash: (1,353k!)
We ran a range of variations on this shot: We captured images in
both fine and super-fine (1280 and 1680) modes, at nominal and +1EV exposure
compensation, and with both automatic and manual white balance settings.
The shots taken at nominal exposure came out a bit dark for our tastes,
and there did not appear to be much difference between the automatic or
manual white balance images at that exposure level. The shots taken with
a +1EV (two steps on the 1680's manual exposure adjustment control) seemed
about the right brightness, but still carried a fair bit of the warm tones
of the household incandescent lighting this shot is taken under. The manual
white point option did result in noticeably "cleaner" whites in
the model's blouse, and is the setting we chose for the main link above,
to represent the 1680's performance in this test. The tables below contain
links to all the variations we shot. (The boldface entry will give you the
quickest look at representative results.)
We also experimented with Agfa's PhotoWise software on this image, playing
with the various color, contrast and brightness controls. The biggest
surprise was how exceptionally well the "Quick Fix" control
worked on the default-exposed images: A single mouse-click, and literally
a matter of a few seconds on our Pentium-II/350 Windows machine, and this
was the result! (915k!) The color is dramatically
better, with much cleaner whites, and more open skin tones. The blue flowers
are still shaded toward purple, but the overall effect is quite striking.
This control seemed to work best for underexposed images, but we were
very impressed with how well it worked, and how natural the resulting
image appeared. The process appears benign enough that you could probably
apply it to most incoming images as a matter of course, although we didn't
experiment with it to any great extent. |
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House shot:
(1,808k!) Our standard
"House" poster shows the excellent detail the 1680 is capable
of, as well as the behavior of the PhotoGenie™ interpolation, and the
effect of the manual white-point setting. A full range of image-quality
variations are displayed in the table below, for manual white balance settings.
(The 1280-mode sample (1,231k!)
will give you a slightly quicker "look" than the main photo
above.) Overall detail is excellent, and color is very good as well. If
you examine this auto white-balance shot (1,239k!),
you can see the subtle but noticeable improvement we found typical of this
technology when working with well-lit subjects: the manual white-balance
images show a somewhat cooler tone, and overall color rendition truer to
the original. As before, we have included both PhotoGenie-processed and
"raw" camera images here so you can see the difference PhotoGenie
makes.
With PhotoGenie Processing
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Far-Field shot:
(1,645k!) 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.
The abundance of fine detail in this shot makes it ideal for examining
lens performance, even though there will be substantial variations in
the subject matter itself due to changing seasons and weather conditions.
The ePhoto 1680 displays excellent sharpness, right out to the corners,
and virtually no trace of chromatic aberration. The table below contains
versions of this shot in all of the 1680's resolution modes, including
the monochrome "text" mode, as a reference for resolution in
that mode, with "real" subject material. The "PhotoGenie"-interpolated
images provide an interesting view of how Agfa's enhancement technology
works with a wide range of detail. Some of its effects are quite subtle,
others quite evident. In this shot (1,645k!),
it appears to reduce image noise somewhat, while applying a variable degree
of sharpening, depending on the contrast of the objects. (Note that the
sharpening is much more evident along the eaves of the house than in the
fine detail of tree branches and pine foliage.) To its credit, its effect
on most of the fine detail in the image is fairly subtle, sharpening it
without introducing obtrusive artifacts of its own. The overall impact,
particularly on printed output, is a clean sharpening, without strong
halos or other obvious artifacts. (The one artificial note we did observe
was that the shadowed tree limbs stood out as more starkly black than
they were in the actual scene.) For comparison, here's a copy up-sampled
in Photoshop (692k). Not only would we vote
for the PhotoGenie version, but we found we couldn't duplicate PhotoGenie's
subtle sharpening effects using any of the Photoshop sharpening tools,
in any combination.
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"Musicians"
poster: (1,479k!) Again,
really excellent detail and resolution, among the best we've seen. The main
shot (1,479k!) was taken with the white
balance set to "manual", while this one
(975k, 1280-mode) was shot with the balance set to
"auto." Again, while subtle, we felt that the manual white balance
produced a noticeable improvement in overall color balance. For this image,
we ran a full set of resolution samples with the manual white-point adjustment,
and included examples of both PhotoGenie-processed and "raw" images.
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Macro shot:
(1,516k!) The ePhoto 1680 did well in macro
mode, with a minimum capture area of 3.2 x 4.2 inches (8.0 x 10.7 cm), at
its closest working distance of 4 inches (10cm). The 1680 is somewhat unusual
in that you can achieve the greatest macro enlargements with the lens set
to the wide-angle end of its range, rather than the telephoto end! (The
lens zooms in a factor of 3x, but focuses 5x closer at the wide-angle end
of its range.) This results in a rather short working distance relative
to the area covered. (You can even see the bottom of the camera mount from
our copy stand at the bottom of the main images here.) Although it's not
rated to, we found that the 1680's flash worked very well up close, as this
image (1,053k!! shows. We recommend taping
a piece of neutral-density gel material across the flash head for really
close work with light-colored subjects, though. For 'web workers, the 1680's
digital telephoto mode will work in conjunction with the macro mode, to
produce close-ups like this (259k),
and its normal 640x480 mode is particularly "clean", thanks to
PhotoGenie, as shown in this image (265k).
Finally, for completeness, here's a shot in "1280"
mode. (1,002k!) |
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"Davebox"
test target: (1,300k!) The "Davebox"
is a tough test of color accuracy and tonal rendition. The 1680 did quite
well here, producing clean, bright colors. As with most digicams today,
the "gamma" of the 1680's images is more suited to display on
a PC monitor than a Mac one. (We're Mac folks from 'way back.) On Macs,
the Davebox image looks a little washed-out, but setting your screen gamma
up to 2.2 or higher quickly clears the "haze." On PCs, the color
and tonal range is excellent, with very good highlight and shadow detail.
On the Q60 target, the 1680 holds color in the difficult pastels all the
way to row "B", and all but the very darkest step of the grayscale
wedge can be distinguished by playing with the contrast settings on your
monitor, or in an imaging application. The only (minor) weaknesses are in
the somewhat weak rendering of the bright green and yellow squares on the
MacBeth™ target, and the rather purplish coloration of the MacBeth's
magenta swatch. For this shot, we've included images captured using manual
white-point correction, across the range of resolution modes. For contrast,
here's a sample in 1280 mode, taken with the white balance set to "auto".
(All shots with PhotoGenie applied)
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ISO 12233 ("WG-18")
resolution target: (514k) (Technoids only)
(Note: Main shot here without PhotoGenie processing.)Visual
resolution of 600-650 line pairs per picture height in the horizontal direction,
and a solid 600 lp/ph in the vertical direction is among the best we've
seen to date (12/98). The diagonal high-resolution resolution wedge at upper
left in the image shows clearly distinguishable details along the diagonal
of as much as 800 lp/ph, albeit with low amplitude. The images are almost
entirely free of color artifacts due to aliasing of the sensor striping
pattern. The unusual, artifical subject content appears to "fake out"
the PhotoGenie processing of the 1600x1200 images, revealing odd artifacts
in the diagonal resolution elements, and some over-sharpening of the image.
Overall performance is excellent though, at the very top of the (December,
1998) field. Monochrome mode doesn't reveal any more detail, but produces
a smaller file, with very low levels of JPEG artifacts. In typical "more
than you probably wanted to know" fashion, we include below a full
set of resolution target samples, shot in all resolution modes, at both
wide-angle and telephoto ends of the lens' range, and both with and without
the special PhotoGenie processing.
Telephoto
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Viewfinder accuracy/flash uniformity target:
Viewfinder accuracy is better than average, at 90% coverage of final image,
and flash uniformity ranges from excellent at the telephoto
end (201k) to very good at the wide-angle
end (229k) of the lens' range. Particularly impressive
is the lens' almost total lack of geometric distortion: A very rare feat,
particularly at the widest-angle setting! |
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