Compared to...

Studio scene comparison (RAW)

For a (more) level playing field for comparison we also shot our studio scene in RAW mode with each camera and converted it using Adobe Camera RAW. Because Adobe Camera RAW applies different levels of sharpening to different cameras (this confirmed) we had to use the following workflow for these conversions:

• Load RAW file into Adobe Camera RAW (Auto mode disabled)
• Set Sharpness to 0 (all other settings default)
• Open file to Photoshop
• Apply a Unsharp mask: 80%, Radius 1.0, Threshold 0
• Save as a TIFF (for cropping) and as a JPEG quality 11 for download

This is our standard studio scene comparison shot taken from exactly the same tripod position. Lighting: daylight simulation, >98% CRI. Crops are 100%. Ambient temperature was approximately 22°C (~72°F). Camera settings as per previous pages.

Sony DSLR-A200 (RAW) vs. Olympus E-420 (RAW)

Sony DSLR-A200 (RAW)	Olympus E-420 (RAW)
2,926 JPEG (3872 x 2592)	2,615 KB JPEG (3648 x 2736)

While shooting in RAW squeezes a tiny amount of additional detail out of the A200 the Olympus output hardly changes and still appears comparatively soft. The color rendition is fairly similar on both cameras though.