I've been reading a lot on the Fuji X cameras compared to Sony's NEX models, trying to make a decision between them. The consensus seems to be that Fuji's sensor has a high ISO advantaged compared to traditional bayer sensors, at the expense of low ISO performance.
However, checking online comparisons, one can see that the ISO ratings of the two cameras are very different. For example, in the two images below, from dpreview, both cameras are set to ISO 6400 at f/8. The Fuji gives a shutter speed of 1/1000, while the NEX-5N gives 1/1600 (what I'm really considering is the NEX-6 so I chose what I think it's the most similar output available on dpreview):
In the test at thephoblographer.com, both cameras are set to f/5.6, 1/125 and ISO 6400, and it can be seen that the NEX image is overexposed.
This seems to mean that a fair comparison against Fuji's ISO 6400 would require a lower ISO rating on the NEX, which finally brings me to the question: do the Fuji cameras really have a high-ISO advantage?
(There's no intention to bash Fuji here... as a whole camera system I actually believe it's superior to the NEX system because of ergonomics, manual controls, the OVF in the X-Pro 1 and native lens quality).
The Suede explained how the X trans pattern awhile back leads to less resolution at low iso, but also noise suppression at high iso. So it is not so much that the camera is applying noise suppression to the image, but rather that the pattern of the colour overlay on the sensor (i.e., the x-trans pattern) lowers noise at high iso. The OP is right that ISO 6400 may not be the same for both cameras--this is common comparing across platforms, but I think based on the comments by the Suede, even if this was corrected the Fujis with the xtrans sensor would still have a clear high iso advantage.
Steve Spencer wrote:
The OP is right that ISO 6400 may not be the same for both cameras--this is common comparing across platforms, but I think based on the comments by the Suede, even if this was corrected the Fujis with the xtrans sensor would still have a clear high iso advantage.
But then if you compare the Fuji at 6400 and the NEX at 3200, X-Trans will lose its image quality advantage, no?
I think its more about Fuji probably using same sensor as NEX-5N. Which is good at high ISO. Different pattern can cancel out noise more easily, but until we have some really good RAW converters, we wont see much of it from RAW.
Btw. if Im correct you are loosing just color resolution. Resolution itself shouldnt be much different from sensor with Bayer CFA.
andrenth wrote:
But then if you compare the Fuji at 6400 and the NEX at 3200, X-Trans will lose its image quality advantage, no?
But it doesn't look like the correction should be a full stop. At least the shutter speeds you listed don't support that. So, the Fuji still probably has an advantage just not as big as the examples you were looking at suggest.
