Disappointed by the Z5 camera pictures quality: a critical comparison!

Dear all,

Like they say "the devil's in the details" and "the beauty is in the eye of the beholder"... Nonetheless this is not meant to inflame anyone but rather to open your eyes for what is to be seen.
It's not about fanboys wars but about waking up Sony until it's not too late. The idea for the pictures below is simple: they represent 100% zooms in comparisons of some of the currently available "heads on" camera tests between Sony Z5 and other models.
So far I will save my comments for later on. I should add I am a pro photographer for more than 15 year and - aside from the artistic misconceptions I might have - at least I properly understand what digital image quality about.

Source of images used in this comparison:
http://www.eprice.com.tw/mobile/talk...ompact-review/
AND
http://www.phonearena.com/news/First...arison_id73408

Provided other comparisons will show-up on the web I will take my time to add more of such 100% match-up. Enjoy and... spread the love! :highfive:

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>>>> Correction: the caption on the right should read Galaxy S6 not Note5. My bad!

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As a professional photographer I can say that this phone so far has a very impressive camera.
The dynamic range is insane, I haven't encountered a situation where the highlights has been blown out or the shadows completely dark yet.
The exposure metering system in the camera does a very good job of finding the right exposure.
The color reproduction is very very good, far better than any other smartphone I've seen.
Yeah the colors are "duller" and less "contrasty" than other phones, but this is because it is neutral. And everyone has got to love neutral.
Neutral means that it is much easier for anyone to edit the photo to get it where you want it.

I see that some people complain about detail and sharpness. And yes, there is some lack of sharpness and some "smudgyness" in the corners. But for **** sake, my $1300 nikon lens is also less sharp and "smudgy" in the corners. The center sharpness of this camera is very good and the capture of details is also good. There is no chromatic aberration at all, not even at F/2. And I've tested this in the corners in very high contrast situations. Even my Nikon D800 with the $1300 24-120 gets chromatic aberration on the widest aperture.

Ok, the 23 mp photos isn't perfect when you zoom in 100%. But who the **** uses their smartphone as a professional camera anyway? Most of people will not print photos bigger than A4 and at 23mp this will mean that the original photo will be downscaled and the photo appear sharper after print. And who prints phone photos anyways? Let's face it guys, most people take photos for snapshots or to post on social media. And for social media you don't really need photos bigger than 1500 on the short side. Again this will mean that the 23mp photos of the Z5 will be downscaled and appear sharper.

It might not be perfect in a lab or testing it to the max zoomed 100% in. But in real life use, this phone has a camera that is so good that I will actually start leaving the D800 at home some times. And just to put it that way, my D800 with 24-120 is not perfect in a lab either.
Remember that Sony makes sensors for Nikon and have some awesome cameras themselves. I knew I wouldn't be disappointed even though there are so many haters.

Here you can find some test shots done today. The test shots were done in Manual mode 23mp without any tweaking of the settings.

Test shots with the Sony Z5 in manual mode. No settings altered. by TordFuglstad, on Flickr

TheEndHK said:

https://www.sendspace.com/file/e451np
Here are some photo I've taken today with Z1c and S6, you can identify it by the folder name or file name. Z1c got both 8MP and 20MP but I've been rolled back to KitKat and 20MP mode on KK is buggy and easy soft, it should perform more better on Lolipop.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Thanks, I'll have a look in a moment. Much appreciated.

---------- Post added at 04:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:39 PM ----------

There has been a lot said, above, about how "Awful" the Z5 is in some site's side by side comparisons with the competition. As has been pointed out by myself and others, the Z5's wider field of view has not been taken into account in these tests and the phone has NOT been used at its optimum resolution (8MP) in each case. This has heavily biased the result.

The image below shows how this can be deeply misleading, as do the following set of images.

The Image attached shows the difference that adjusting for the different field of view and dropping to 8MP makes: the result speaks for itself. All I have done is simulate the the level playing field that the sites should have given the Z5.

Initial image: both images cropped identically - on the left is with the image at 20MP while standing a step away, to simulate the FOV difference. This simulates how the phone has been used in the tests referenced earlier on this thread. On the right, is an 8mp image with a single step forward to adjust for the FOV. The result is dramatic.

Thoughts are welcome. Flickr feed demonstration https://www.flickr.com/gp/136945683@N06/Tw852X

Back to the beginning...

So now that I'm a lot more familiar with the Z5, let's go back to the original post from dehnhaide. The crops of the pics he had posted seemed to point to the Z5 pics being worse than the Note 5. So let me go through them one at a time, as now I know a lot better what to look for.

Here are the original links if you want to play along:
http://www.eprice.com.tw/mobile/talk/4523/4953454/1/rv/sony-xperia-z5-compact-review/
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Firs...vs-Z3-vs-G4-camera-samples-comparison_id73408

Pic #1: the salad. If you look at the pics closely, the Z5 pic has more noise and the lettuce is not as detailed. The noise is because it's in 23 MP rather than 8 MP, obviously. The detail is the funny part - the Z5's focus is on the plate, rather than the lettuce. Why? That's because of the 4:3 framing and much larger FOV. If the pic was taken in default 8 MP in 16:9 and proper FOV, the Z5 would have taken a different picture. As I've maintained from the beginning, comparing dissimilar pics leads to errors, as is in this case.

Pic #2: the building. Notice the discolouration in the middle of the Z5 pic? That's glare. You can clearly see the glare coming in at the top of the Z5 pic. Once again, the larger FOV caused a problem. With the added glare, the Z5 lost detail. That should have been caught by the reviewer and re-taken.

Pic #3: the red car. Blur and lack of night mode because the camera was using 23 MP. If the camera was left in default 8 MP, scene detection would have kicked in.

Pic #4, 5, 6, 7, 8: Excelsior Caffe, hotel, night pics. Similar to #3 - noise from 23 MP mode and lack of night/low light scene detection. Use 8 MP mode.

Pic #9: trees. Glare from sunlight. Look at the Z5 pic - it covers twice as much sky as the Note 5, so suffers from much greater glare. Also, the Note 5 has a purple tinge to the sky.

Pics #10, 11: night pics. Same story as #3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Pic #12: tree and sign. Yup, you guessed it - the Z5 is focused on the middle part of the tree, while the S6 is focused more on the lower part and the sign. So, obviously, the sign in the Z5 pic is slightly less focused. Another bad comparison.

Conclusion: What more needs to be said? Comparing 4:3 pics to 16:9 with different FOVs was and is a bad idea. Some of the pics weren't even focused on the same thing! If they had stuck with the default 8 MP at least, the Z5 could have saved some of the pics. Those initial reviews just didn't have a clue what to do with the Z5 camera.

Here we go:


DSC_0644 by doministry, on Flickr

DSC_0629 by doministry, on Flickr

DSC_0699 by doministry, on Flickr

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DSC_0667 by doministry, on Flickr

DSC_0663_20160305114850030 by doministry, on Flickr

DSC_0505 by doministry, on Flickr

DSC_0504_20160108135743914 by doministry, on Flickr

DSC_0760-01 by doministry, on Flickr

DSC_0522-01 by doministry, on Flickr
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DSC_0717 by doministry, on Flickr