Benchmarking the Lens

I've always wanted to benchmark the Kodak Z740. For that matter, I've always been interested in benchmarks for cameras and lenses, the Kodak Z740 being just one of them. I just never did get around to it. That is, until recently, when Darwi gave a comment that she looked fat in the picture below:

From Celebrating the New Year at Marikina

This was taken last New Year's Day. And I had the knee-jerk reaction to comment that it was due to the Holidays. Everyone gains weight during the Christmas break. Of course, Kenneth beat me to the punchline.

But the picture got me thinking, because even Kenneth looked fat in the picture. Me, I looked puffed up.

Thinking about it, I did a simple benchmark photo using the camera. The procedure is very simple. Tape a graphing paper onto the wall and take a picture of it. I used the widest angle and the longest zoom for the pictures below. A scan of the photos is enough for to come to a conclusion.

The resulting photos (click on the pictures to enlarge):

From Z740 Lens Benchmark

From Z740 Lens Benchmark

The top photo was shot with the widest angle. While the second one was with shot at full zoom. For the Z740 with 10x optical zoom, the range is from 6.3mm to 63mm. At its widest, the lens is the rough equivalent of 25 to 28mm on a regular 35mm SLR.

With wide-angle lenses, you would normally expect some barreling on the resulting picture. However, the barreling is still evident on the second photo. This would have been a concern for a 35mm camera. However, the truth is that the smaller the camera, and the resulting lens, the more pronounced barreling would be.

Translation: take a portrait up close with a small lens and the subject would look a bit fatter due to the barreling effect.

Solution: move away from the subject and shoot with the telephoto, long focal-length lens. Even for a small camera or a small lens, the error would be lessened by the distance.

Besides all that, the camera is great!

--Andoy
10 January 2009