Digital Cameras - Canon PowerShot A510 Test Images
I've begun including links in our reviews to a Thumbnail
index page for the test shots. The data on this page includes a host
of information on the images, including shutter speed, ISO setting, compression
setting, etc. Rather than clutter the page below with all that detail,
we're posting the thumbnail index so only those interested in the information
need wade through it!
"Sunlit" Portrait: (This is my new "Outdoor" Portrait test - read more about
it here.)
High resolution and a lot of fine detail. Nearly accurate color and
saturation, though high contrast.
The extreme tonal range of this image makes it a tough shot for many
digital cameras, 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 PowerShot A510 did pretty well, but
produced more contrast than I'd prefer.
The shot at right was taken with a +0.7 EV exposure
compensation adjustment, which resulted in high contrast, but reasonably
bright midtones. The highlights on the white shirt and in the flower bouquet
are quite bright, as a result of the high contrast, and the shadows are
dark. (Intended mainly as a "point and shoot" digital
camera, the A510 has no option for adjusting its contrast.) All three
of the A510's white balance settings produced good results here, though
I chose the Auto setting as the most accurate
overall. The Daylight setting had a very slight
warm cast, and the Manual setting had a reddish
tint. Still, good results with each.
Skin tones look pretty good in Marti's face, if a little pinkish, but
the blue flowers in the bouquet are a hint dark, with purplish tints.
(Many digital cameras have trouble with this blue, which is actually a
light navy with just hints of purple.) The color looks good throughout
the rest of the frame, with good saturation as well. Resolution is good
for the camera's three-megapixel class, and detail is strong in Marti's
features as well as in the flower bouquet. Shadow detail is moderate,
and image noise is low.
To view the entire exposure series from zero to +1.0 EV, see files A51OUTAP0.HTM
through A51OUTAP3.HTM on the thumbnail index page.
Excellent resolution and detail, but again, high
contrast.
Though contrast is again high from the high-key lighting,
midtone detail is good here. The shot at right was taken with a no exposure
compensation adjustment and is a little dark in the midtones, but I felt
that the shot with +0.3 EV of adjustment
was just too bright. The A510's 4x zoom lens helps prevent geometric distortion
in Marti's features. Resolution and detail are even better in this close-up
shot, and the fine details of Marti's face and hair are well-defined.
A good job.
To view the entire exposure series from zero to +0.7 EV, see files A51OUTFACAP0.HTM
through A51OUTFACAP2.HTM on the thumbnail index page.
Good performance from the camera's flash, with pretty good color as
well.
The A510's built-in flash illuminated the subject very well with a +1.0
EV exposure compensation adjustment, though the default
exposure was somewhat dim. Overall color is warm from the background
incandescent lighting, with orange tints on Marti's hair and shirt, as
well as on the background. Marti's skin tone looks pretty good, albeit
a little warm from the room lighting, but the blue flowers are dark and
purplish. A positive point here is that the color from the flash matches
that of the room lighting fairly well, avoiding the harsh blue highlights
I sometimes see in flash photos shot under incandescent lighting.
To view the entire exposure series from zero to +1.3 EV, see files A51INFP0.HTM
through A51INFP4.HTM on the thumbnail index page.
Good color with the Incandescent white balance, and good exposure
as well.
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 A510's Auto white
balance setting fell victim to this trap, producing a strong orange cast.
However, the A510's Manual and Incandescent
settings both produced nearly accurate color, though I settled on the
Incandescent setting for the main shot. (The Manual setting was just slightly
greenish.) Marti's skin tone looks good, though slightly pinkish, but
the flower bouquet looks very good, better than I've come to expect from
cameras on this shot. The blue flowers do have slight purplish tints to
them, but their color is just about right, considering the difficult light
source here. The main shot was taken with a +1.0 EV exposure compensation
adjustment, which is about average. An excellent job.
To view the entire exposure series from zero to +1.3 EV, see files A51INTP0.HTM
through A51INTP4.HTM on the thumbnail index page.
ISO Series:
Image noise is quite low at ISO 50, becomes visible at ISO 100, prominent
at ISO 200, and high but acceptable for many uses at ISO 400. (Fairly
typical for a 3-megapixel point & shoot digital camera.) That said,
the images at ISO 200 should be more than acceptable for most users, even
when printed at 8x10 inches. Even the ISO 400 images from the A510 looked
perfectly OK when printed at 5x7 inches on the Canon i9900 inkjet printer
in our studio, and many people would probably find the ISO 400 8x10s usable
as well.
Accurate color, with high resolution and good detail for the A510's
3-megapixel class.
While all three of the A510's white balance settings tested performed
pretty well here, I chose the Manual setting
as the most accurate overall, based on the white value of the house trim.
The Daylight and Auto
settings resulted in very slight warm casts, but results were still quite
good. Taking into consideration its 3-megapixel CCD, resolution is very
high, and detail is strong in the tree limbs, front shrubbery, and house
front. Details are also sharp throughout the frame.
High resolution and strong detail for its 3-megapixel class, but high
contrast limits the dynamic range slightly.
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
A510 captures very good detail for a 3-megapixel camera. The leaf patterns
in the front shrubbery and in the tree limbs above the roof show a lot
of fine detail, as does the brick pattern on the house front. Details
are sharp and well-defined, though with very slight softness in the corners
of the frame. The bright sunlight causes the camera to lose a lot of detail
in the bright white paint surrounding the bay window, which is a trouble
spot for many digital cameras. Detail is moderate in the shadow area above
the front door as well, further evidence of a limited dynamic range. The
table below shows a standard resolution and quality series, followed by
ISO and color effects series.
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 (4x,
in this case), and at full telephoto with the digital zoom enabled. The
A510's lens is equivalent to a 35-140mm zoom on a 35mm camera. That corresponds
to a moderate wide angle to a pretty good telephoto, a longer range than
the 3x zoom offered by most point & shoot digital cameras. Following
are the results at each zoom setting.
Some color cast with each setting, but good overall results. High
resolution and detail.
This shot is often a tough test for digital cameras, as the abundance
of blue in the composition frequently tricks white balance systems into
producing a warm color balance. Though slightly cool, I chose the A510's
Manual white balance setting for the main
shot here, despite slightly pale and magenta skin tones. Both the Auto
and Daylight settings resulted in warmer color
casts. The shadows of the blue robe are somewhat purplish from the magenta
tint, and the blue background has some purplish tints as well. Resolution
is very high, and the embroidered bird wings on the blue robe show a lot
of detail, as well as the models' accessories and instruments.
A small macro area with great detail. Flash has trouble up close
though.
The A510 performed very well in the macro category, capturing a minimum
area of 1.98 x 1.48 inches (50 x 38 millimeters). Resolution is high and
detail is strong throughout the frame, though the coins and brooch are
soft due to the close shooting range. Details soften slightly toward the
furthest corners of the frame, but are sharp on the dollar bill. (Most
digital cameras produce images with soft corners when shooting in their
Macro modes.) The A510's flash had trouble
at such close range, and overexposed the majority of the image, leaving
a strong shadow in the lower right corner of the frame. (Definitely plan
on using external lighting for your close-in macro shots with the A510.)
The A510's Manual white balance setting produced
the best results here, as the Auto and Daylight
settings were both slightly warm. Exposure looks about right, and the
A510 has no trouble distinguishing the subtle tonal variations of the
Q60 target. The color here is typical "Canon Color," a compliment
to any camera. Most colors are slightly oversaturated, with the exception
of the bright yellow swatch, which is a bit undersaturated. Cyans and
light blues are shifted fairly strongly toward deeper blues (more so than
on the A520), which makes for good-looking sky colors. Reds and pinks
are also a bit more saturated than on the A520. Generally, a good balance
between pleasing color and accuracy, but I'd like to see the blues a bit
less saturated. The shadow area of the charcoal briquettes shows good
detail, with moderately low noise.
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.
Excellent low-light performance. Good color and exposure, with low
image noise, at the darkest light levels of this test. Pretty good low-light
autofocus performance.
The A510 produced clear, bright, usable images down to the 1/16 foot-candle
(0.67 lux) limit of my test, with good color at the 100, 200, and 400
ISO settings. At ISO 50, images were bright down to the 1/8 foot-candle
(1.3 lux) light level, though the target is visible at the lowest light
level of the test. Noise is fairly low in most shots, and even at ISO
400, image noise is high but the grain pattern isn't too bright. The A510's
autofocus system worked down to a bit brighter than 1/4 foot-candle with
the AF-assist light turned off, and down to about 1/4 foot-candle with
it on. (Oddly, the AF-assist light didn't extend the AF range all that
much.) Since city street-lighting at night generally corresponds to a
light level of about one foot-candle, the A510 should perform well in
most average night settings. 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
1.6 sec
f2.6
4 sec
f2.6
8 sec
f2.6
15 sec
f2.6
15 sec
f2.6
ISO
100
1/1 sec
f2.6
2 sec
f2.6
4 sec
f2.6
8 sec
f2.6
15 sec
f2.6
ISO
200
1/2 sec
f2.6
1 sec
f2.6
2 sec
f2.6
4 sec
f2.6
8 sec
f2.6
ISO
400
1/5 sec
f2.6
1/2 sec
f2.6
1 sec
f2.6
2 sec
f2.6
4 sec
f2.6
Flash Range Test
A weak flash, underexposing slightly even at eight feet.
In my testing, the A510's flash underexposed the target a little at 8
feet, showing significant decreases in intensity from the nine-foot distance
on. Below is the flash range series, with distances from eight to 14 feet
from the target.
High resolution, 1,075 lines of "strong detail." Average
barrel distortion at wide angle, no pincushion at telephoto. Good corner
sharpness, almost no chromatic aberration.
The A510 performed well on the "laboratory" resolution test
chart for its 3.2-megapixel class. It started showing artifacts in the
test patterns at resolutions as low as 800 lines per picture height vertically
and horizontally. I found "strong detail" out to at least 1,100
lines horizontally, 1,050 lines vertically. "Extinction" of
the target patterns didn't occur until about 1,250 lines. Here's a sample
image with the camera's Low Sharpness setting.
Geometric distortion on the A510 is about average at the wide-angle end,
where I measured approximately 0.8 percent barrel distortion. The telephoto
end fared quite a bit better, as I measured approximately 0.11 percent
pincushion distortion (about two pixels' worth). Chromatic aberration
is virtually nonexistent, as I couldn't really find any strong pixels
of coloration. (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 A510's images were also sharper than average in the corners,
where many digital camera lenses get quite soft.
A tight optical viewfinder, but very accurate LCD monitor.
The A510's optical viewfinder is very tight, showing only 80 percent
of the final image area at wide angle, and about 82 percent at telephoto.
The LCD monitor actually proved very slightly loose, showing just a
bit more than what made it into the final frame, though results were
near 100 percent accuracy. Given that I like LCD monitors to be as close
to 100 percent accuracy as possible, the A510's LCD monitor performed
pretty well here, but its optical viewfinder could use some help. Flash
distribution is a little uneven at wide angle, with some falloff at
the corners and edges of the frame. At telephoto, flash distribution
is more uniform.
