Head to Head Comparison continued

Below you can find a studio shot comparison between the Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-T33 and the Olympus Camedia C-5060WZ at ISO 400. Both cameras were mounted on a tripod and the shutter was released by the in-camera timer. There is no Aperture priority or Manual exposure mode on Sony, so "Auto" was used instead of A, used with the Camedia camera. Both of them where set manually to the appropriate WB, ISO and exposure compensation settings.

High ISO performance

• Sony DSC-T33: Single Shot mode, ISO 400, Fine Quality, Tungsten White Balance, Default Image parameters +0.7EV Exposure Compensation. Zoom lens at 7mm.
• Olympus C-5060WZ: Aperture Priority, ISO 400, Fine Quality, Tungsten White Balance, Default Image parameters +0.7EV Exposure Compensation. Zoom lens at 9mm.
• Lighting: 2x500W Tungsten 3200K studio lamps with diffusion umbrellas

Sony DSC-T33	Olympus C-5060WZ
ISO 400, F3.5, 1/30sec	ISO 400, F5.6, 1/30sec
Original Image (2.24 MB)	Original Image (2.57MB)

The impressive results - for the ultra compact - continue. Sony's image processor clearly handles noise really well, actually producing better results than the Olympus in many aspects.

Colour accuracy is almost identical to what we saw when using ISO 100, with the DSC-T33 having a soft red colour cast due to the WB offset, but also giving much more pleasing saturation in reds, yellows and greens. The C-5060 WZ pulls more detail in the bright areas of the scene, while on the dark ones the overall impression is not so good due to the bluish RGB noise. Though the T33's image seems a bit underexposed in comparison to the C-5060's, the Sony is able to capture comparable or even more detail in the dark areas, while keeping the noise to acceptable levels.