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Cameras

Field Review: Olympus XZ-1 (Day 2)

Chris Gampat
No Comments
04/06/2011
3 Mins read
Chris Gampat XZ-1 eggs edited (1 of 2)

The other day I was in Union Square when I stumbled upon Emu eggs. Taking advantage of this awesome opportunity, I quickly snapped photos of them with the Olympus XZ-1. The first impressions of the camera were still holding strong, but does the image quality seem up to par?

First off, note that all images in this story were shot in RAW and then processed in Adobe Lightroom 3.

RAW File Versatility

The opening image is the result of adding fill light, raising the contrast, and the clarity a bit. That comes from what the original file was down below.

Oh right, and I cropped it quite a bit. Considering the fact that this camera has a 10MP sensor, it is able to still keep lots of detail for web images. That’s totally alright with me, I’m almost never making prints.

Here is another unedited image. As you can see a good portion of the image is still very dark. So what will happen when we add a gradient to raise the exposure in the dark area and then we use the paint brush tool or burn the chicken egg a bit?

Most people would not be able to tell that the above image was edited. And indeed, the raw files are still very versatile and can still keep lots of detail and color.

Dynamic Range

Here’s another original. I tried editing the image and tweaking the color balance in Lightroom 3.

This was the best I could get. So I tried it again.

Here’s another original.

And here is the edit. With all this said, I can conclude that the dynamic range is lacking a bit, but that the color depth is actually very good. In fact, it beats out the Canon S95 and Leica D-LUX 5.

Perhaps the Canon S95’s dynamic range is a bit better, but the Leica doesn’t seem like it can touch the Olympus at all.

In terms of sharpness, the Olympus Zukio lens seems very sharp.

Then I came across the above data. And none of it made sense to me. Sure the S95 has some nice color, but it’s not beating the XZ-1 in my opinion. I’ll be putting the three cameras head to head to head soon.

So what does this all mean to you? For a professional that wants a small camera to shoot great images, the image quality is very up to par and if you accept that you’re using a point and shoot you won’t have much of a problem at all. Color accuracy is the best I’ve seen in any Olympus camera (even in low light.)

For the enthusiast and hobbyist: this is a darn good choice. Most of your market segment seems to shoot n JPEG. In that case, you’ll be very happy. If you’re shooting in RAW, just know that you have some versatility, but don’t expect the versatility of a DSLR’s raw files because of the small sensor size.

Either way, you’ll love the Olympus XZ-1.

More to come in the field review!

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dynamic range eggs Emu image quality lightroom 3 olympus raw files XZ-1
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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