Thursday, April 14, 2011

F550EXR vs. F200EXR – Just a walk — Review Part 33

I took a walk at lunch yesterday while the sun was shining beautifully and brought the two cameras with me. It’s actually a real PITA to shoot everything with two cameras, so I only managed four matching images. I did not do any fancy analysis here, and I processed each image to get what I thought I could from them. All are jpegs here.

First, I walked up to my 12 foot high Lilac bush (it was a small 3 footer when I bought it in 98 I think) and checked out the buds. I was gratified to find lots of flower buds … which you can easily tell by looking at the ones on the tips … if they have bumps and are not green, then you have flowers coming LOL.

Don’t you always have flowers? No. When the bush is young, it needs appropriate fertilization and some extra pruning to bud for flowers. These buds are formed before winter and then survive the winter to bloom early. If you let the bush waste its energy on seeding, and / or forget to add fertilizer, you may have a lean year the next year. I speak from experience.

In this series, I will always show the F550EXR image first.

I think I wasted a bit of magnification on the F200 image … I held the cam a bit further away. Not sure how close I could have gotten though. The 24mm lens allows you to get really close, which works in a situation like this. And for those who note the static central framing … I agree. Simple comparison and information image … not trying for anything artistic.

This one is not matched with an F200EXR image as he was too far away by the time I got the F200 out and ready. But I thought I’d shot it … it’s a heavy crop at 100 ISO. What is amazing is the detail I could pull up from the black with a jpeg image. Very nice.

In the next pair, the reach of the F550 allowed me to frame the image directly. The F200 image had to be cropped to match. I reset the white balance on the F550 but forgot on the F200, so it stays cooler. Sorry.

I believe that I saw at least 8 or 10 male Robins running around lawns looking for worms in my walk of perhaps 30 or 40 minutes. Here’s one I shot with the F550EXR and then with the F200EXR a bit later. The reach difference really shows here.

The next pair is a bit weird … the F550 was shot without flash at 100 ISO. The F200 was shot with flash at 100 ISO. The F200 flash control is magnificent.

Her name is Sophie if you are interested … sweetest Pug you will ever meet. (They are all sweet … but she has a real shot at being the sweetest.)

So I like the F200 for close in image. It’s flash control is excellent and the detail is of course fantastic. But that clunky body and those menus make it pretty unpleasant after shooting the F550. Still … as we saw in the flare article (part 32), the F550 has it quirks and they are piling up …

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