Pixel Resolution of Olympus 1030sw in Panoramic mode
and resolution comparison of
Fuji E510 and Olympus 1030sw

These photos were taken to originally to determine the resolution and compression of the panoramic format of the Olympus 1030sw camera. The owners manual or the Olympus site does not give specifications. One online forums mentions 3 meg resolution for the specifications of the panoramic format. The photo below shows that the resolution (click panoramic for the original photo) is quite poor, the whole photo being only 1 MB file size. It also shows a lack of dynamic range. In the process of investigating the panoramic format, I took comparison photos of an older Fuji E510 digital camera (about 2 years old) with the newer Olympus 1039sw camera. All the photos, except the panoramic photo, were taken on a tripod. Both cameras have almost the same field of view in the wide angle mode. The photo below is representative of the scene used. The car in the distance is the target for this examination.

The process of the original photos to obtain that seen in the table is as follows: The original photos were cropped (ACDSee 4.0) and saved as jpeg at 100%. Then the jpeg photos were opened in FastStone Image Viewer and resized to 800 pixels wide. (ACDSee 4.0 could not resize to a pixel width, only a % of the original.) Hyperaccess screen capture was used to grab the enlarged photo and saved as a 24 bit png image to preserve the quality of the enlarged cropped photo. If a jpeg process at 100% was used it would have made the photo file size much too large. So the photos seen when clicking on the table thumbnail images is as close to the original pixelation of the originals. The heading designations of “fine” and “normal” refer to the mfgs designations for the amount of compression used on the images. Fine being less compression to preserve more fine detail.

The panoramic photo was taken on a sunny day but the tripod test photos were taken the next day under bright overcast conditions. The target car was parked into the driveway for the panoramic photo, but backed in the drive for the test photos.

The EXIF file shows that this panoramic format was shot at 1/320 sec at f4.5 at 800 ISO. Another indoor shot has the panoramic mode at 1/80 at f 3.5 at 2500 ISO. The original EXIF file shows an uncompressed size of 8 MB for three photos stitched. If each photo was about 3 MB in original size it would compare to three 1 meg Normal photos (3.5 MB for the test photo below). But the compression ratio in the 1 meg photo is 12.7 and the panoramic compression is 7.7. But an examination of the detail photos below shows that the amount of blurring is much more for the panoramic photo than the 1 meg normal image. This suggests that the overall compression for the three stitched photos is 3 x 7.7, or upward to 20.

The other test photos show that the resolution of the Fuji E510 at the 5 meg mode is better then the same mode for the Olympus 1030sw. At the 10 meg setting, the Olympus is better than the 5 meg mode of the Fuji, at the expense of an image size of twice. The contrast of the Fuji seems better also. Both cameras have enhanced saturation settings, but they were not used in the test photos.

The full view from cameras using wide angle setting. This photo down sized to 800 pixels wide.


Panoramic view presented 1/5 size of the original. Click the photo to see the original 1 MB photo. (Back <= to return.)

Clicking on the thumbnail images below will bring up a new tab (or window if you do not use tabs). This way you can compare multiple detail photos.

Rev. July 24, 2008 by M Krabach