My wife recently bought a point-and-shoot for family use–honestly, it is mainly for videos. When I was setting everything up for her, one of the decisions I made was NOT to use the highest image quality setting. Call me crazy. A few factors came into play: image quality, file size, and how big the photos might be printed.

I have already waxed on about the size of the sensor and how that affects image quality. What I still wondered was what the difference really was…I mean in real-life images. The settings I wanted to compare on our camera were the two 12 megapixel settings and the 6 megapixel setting (there is nothing in between). So, here you go:

Comparison of 6MP and 12MP images from a FujiFilm F50fd compact camera.

Those are all separate photos taken at the same time, from a tripod, with the exact same settings (as best I could do so with a compact camera which chooses some settings for you). So, the only difference should be the image quality setting.

Can I see a difference? Sure. On this camera the actual file size of those photos is approximately 1.2MB, 2.8MB, and 4MB, though size varies from camera to camera and photo to photo. Those look like a small difference right now, but 1000 photos later, that is gigabytes worth of difference, and if they are family photos, they are probably all going to be sitting on our laptop so we can show people. So, what I see is this: I can save a lot of space on the computer for a very small difference in quality.

And as for printing, well, never would one of these photos be printed more than an 8×10 inch size, and six megapixels is more than enough for that. So, that is not a problem.

So, my choice (for the point-and-shoot, compact camera) is to just shoot the 6MP setting. What do you think of the quality difference in the images above?

So, that is the first question. What is essential in a compact camera? Honestly, all we wanted was something small to do videos of our children since I am already carrying around my camera for the photographs. I think we can safely put the video issue aside, though, because almost all compact cameras take the same quality of video. What is the most important part of any camera? Image quality.

My search was to find the best compact camera possible, but not to pay a huge price for it. My research labors where not in vain.

Now, I do not know all the science of it all, but I know the size of the camera’s sensor has a huge part to play. That is fairly easy to understand. I also know that some companies can use a big sensor but still totally mess up the image quality with other factors in the chain, and some companies do pretty well at the impossible task of keeping decent quality from small sensors. Basically, though, the bigger that sensor, the better quality photos you will have. So, my first step was to research compact camera sensor sizes.

I know, this sounds ridiculous, but it is simply something the manufacturers do not want you to know. More megapixels from the same physical sized sensor is not going to give you much better results…if any better. So, I went to the trusty DPReview website, my first stop for research and reviews on cameras. I used their side-by-side comparison to go through (literally) every single compact camera they had in their lists. I found out pretty quickly that there are two basic physical sizes of compact camera sensors on the market: 1/2.5″ and 1/1.6″. I am assuming that is a diagonal measurement, like TV screens and computer monitors. So, even the bigger size is only just over a half inch…diagonally. It is a wonder they can take any decent photos!

So, I made a list of every single larger-sized sensor compact camera. The list itself was interesting. Now, don’t quote me on any of this; I am doing it from memory (I should have kept that list, huh?). Canon had some, but only among their expensive compacts (G9, G10). Of course, Leica had a couple, but you will pay for those too. Several companies were completely devoid of any larger sized sensor…Sony being the one I remember most. Samsung had a few, but very scattered here and there in their camera lines…therefore, it would be pretty hard to actually find one. FujiFilm was the real champion here. Their entire F-series line had the bigger sensor, and that line also has some very competitively priced cameras.

So, for the completely subjective part of this whole thing, my wife had recently shot on a friend’s Samsung compact camera. Since, I have seen photos from the same camera. She did not like the display, and when I saw the photos, I was absolutely appalled at the image quality. We know it was new. There just is not any excuse, regardless of how much it cost, for images that horrible. I am not kidding.

And for the other subjective input, my wife had also recently shot a FujiFilm compact that she kept saying how much she loved. I did not want her to influence me too much while figuring out which cameras were options, but then when the FujiFilm F-series showed so many larger sensor cameras in my list, we started looking that direction.

Again on DPReview, just offhand to try a different approach to find for high-quality compact cameras, I looked at their most highly rated cameras. What do you know, in the list of the most highly recommended cameras on their site, two FujiFilm F-series cameras were listed: the F31fd and F50fd. If you actually read through either of those reviews, you will see how little the extra megapixels help us. The F31fd review not only put it among the best compact cameras of its time, but the F50fd review, which was good in and of itself, still struggled to compare to the F31fd in image quality, especially noise at high ISO (film speed).

So, though I tried my best to search for a F31fd (because image quality better than most new cameras at an old camera price was fine by me) among the shops, I found some as old, but there were no 31s to be found. Actually, since I was actually looking in Singapore, I found that there were many F-series cameras not on my list…I guess they have some Asian versions that DPReview would know by different numbers. Anyway, we ended up buying the FujiFilm F50fd and are already impressed by the image quality.

As for all the other features they are trying to pack in new cameras and the extra megapixels, I would say image quality is the most important factor to most people. Woops. I do know of one feature the FujiFilm cameras have, which most do not, which really is a great feature I could talk about more some time. It has a setting on the dial where it will take two photos, back to back, one with flash and one without. Wonderful. If only more people could see how much better their photos were with the flash off!

So, I will give a respectful nod to the bigger sensor compact cameras from Canon, Leica, Panasonic, and (grudgingly) Samsung, but FujiFilm gives quite a variety of price and function in their F-series, all of which (as far as I can tell) have the (comparatively) larger sized sensor. FujiFilm F-series wins. Rarely would I specifically give brand names like this, but in this case, it really did seem to come out quite clearly.