An interesting three-way comparison. Panasonic G6 with the new 14-140mm lens, Leica X Vario with its 18-46mm lens and Fuji X-E1 with 18-55mm lens. I picked the focal length and aperture thats caused so much internet chatter about the Leica - 46mm at f/6.4, which as far as the X Vario is concerned is wide open at that focal length. I shot three sets of images at base ISO for each camera, ISO 800 and ISO 3200. All processed identically from raw using the ACR default settings in Photoshop CC. Below are the 100% blowups.
Sometimes I get surprises when I do these tests / comparisons but not here. Pretty much as I would have expected. The Panasonic and Leica are both slightly sharper, but the Fuji has the lowest noise at the higher ISO's. Again following on from my previous high ISO tests, the G6 produces pretty noisy results.
In a nutshell its the m/43 'dilemma'. Lovely sharp, crisp images at low ISO's but not great when higher settings are chosen. It also illustrates the Fuji X strengths and weaknesses. Though it has no AA filter and as far as I'm aware the other two do (though I have my suspicions about the X Vario) to get the superb high ISO results that it produces, there is a certain amount of noise reduction going on even at the raw level, at least when processed via Adobe converters.
As usual its a case of you pays your money etc. For me the value of these comparisons is that for the ISO settings I shoot at, the G6 with the 14-140mm lens is probably of more use for what I do than the other two cameras. With the 10X zoom it performs very well indeed, and again somewhat beyond what I was expecting.
For others, this sharpness / ISO noise equation won't work, but for me it does, for the majority of my photographic work. There are of course other options, other lenses for the Fuji, different software for the raw files etc. But it gives me an idea of what to use for certain situations and thats all I'm ever trying to achieve with these tests.
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