Spot vs. iESP on the Olympus C4040z

Olympus 4040 - Spot vs. iESP

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In this page you'll find a comparison of the two autofocus modes of the Olympus 4040 digital camera - spot and iESP. For questions send me an email.

My conclusion

I took 60 test images and it was really tough to find images where one autofocus mode performs better than the other one.
Overall, I don't see any big sharpness advantage of one autofocus mode over the other.
In general iESP seems to have a slight advantage over spot (the macro shot, image 7 and image 8 are sharper in iESP than in spot).
However in difficult focusing situations such as in image 10 for instance, when there is a near big object and the actual subject is far away, spot will do a better job.

Image 1

7.3mm, F4.5, 1/650

spot	iESP


Resized to 50%	Resized to 50%

In this image spot and iESP produce more or less the same results -hard to see any sharpness difference.

Image 2

9.5mm, F4, 1/800

spot iESP

Resized to 50% Resized to 50%

Again here no big difference is visible between spot and iESP.

Image 3

spot	iESP
12.2mm, F4, 1/500 (resized to 25%)	12.2mm, F3.6, 1/800 (resized to 25%)

Again no clear winner.

Image 4
(macro shot of a flower)

1/650, F2.6, 21mm

spot	iESP
(resized to 50%)	(resized to 50%)
(resized to 50%)	(resized to 50%)

Here iESP seems to be slightly better focused.

Image 5

1/800, F4, 7.3mm (iESP); 1/650, F3.6, 7.3mm (spot)

spot iESP

(resized to 50%)
(resized to 50%; slightly brightened)

Here spot focus is a tiny little bit sharper.

Image 6

1/8s, F2.3, 13.8mm, no flash (tripod used), ISO 100

spot	iESP

No visible sharpness difference here

Image 7

1/6s, F2.6, 21mm, no flash (tripod used), ISO100

spot	iESP

Here iESP is a little bit sharper.

Image 8

1/10s, F2.3, 13.2mm, no flash (tripod used), ISO 100

spot	iESP

Here iESP is properly focused, while spot is not.

Image 9

1/8s, F2.3, 14.5mm, no flash (tripod used), ISO 100

spot	iESP

Here no sharpness difference is visible.

Image 10

1/650s, F5.6, 13.8mm

A difficult situation - will the camera focus on the curtain, the grid or on the house ?

spot iESP

Here spot focuses precisely on the background (the house), while with iESP focuses on something in between the background and the foreground (the house is less well focused, the grid better).

Image 11

1/800s, F5, 21mm

Same as before with more zoom (21mm vs. 13.8mm)

spot iESP

Here iESP and spot focus on the same things.

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