Olympus C8080 vs Olympus C5050 noise levels

(RAW data comparison)


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Introduction

I recently bought an Olympus 8080 and was curious to see how its image noise compares to that of the Olympus 5050, my previous camera.

CCD cell size is almost the same for both cameras (2.8 micrometer for the 5050 and 2.7 micrometer for the 8080), so I was expecting similar RAW noise levels at the same ISO.

What follows below are the results of a test performed on the RAW CCD data. I didn't meadure the noise of the JPEG files, as here the 8080 should perform better due to its more advanced in-camera noise reduction software.


Test results

It appears that the CCD of the 8080 is a bit more noisy than that of the 5050.

More specifically at ISO 64 the 5050 has the same noise level as the 8080 at ISO 50. At ISO 100 the 5050 has the noise level of the 8080 at ISO 80 (actually a bit lower than that), at ISO 200 the 5050 has the same noise level as the 8080 at ISO 125 and at ISO 400 the 5050 has the same noise level as the 8080 at ISO 250.

Noise test results
ISO
 5050
Test 1
 5050
Test 2
 8080
Test 1
 8080
Test 2
50

1.21
 1.22
64
 1.22
 1.18
 1.35
 1.35
80

1.48
 1.53
100
 1.40
 1.35
 1.71
 1.70
125

1.93
 1.91
160

2.16
 2.22
200
 1.89
 1.85
 2.53
 2.55
250

2.84
 2.90
320

3.39
 3.40
400
 2.80
 2.71
 3.93
 3.99


What does this mean ? Well, if you shoot only JPEG or TIFF you might ignore the results, because the 8080 applies more advanced noise reduction than the 5050, although some detail gets lost as a result of this.

If you however shoot primarily RAW, it basically means that you have to use the 8080 at lower ISOs and therefore the 8080 is less sensitive to light than the 5050. Since the 5050 also has a more bright lens, it is much more suitable for low light handheld photography than the 8080 - in a specific situation the 5050 will need only half the exposure time of the 8080 (or even less, depending on zoom levels).




Test procedure

This test compares the noise levels of the RAW CCD data of the Olympus 8080 with the Olympus 5050. For this I took photos of an 18% grey sheet, lying on the table in my living room. It was an August morning and the illumination came from outside (sunny day with clouds).

Test image

I took the images at different ISO levels with both the Olympus 5050 and 8080. The grey sheet has a smooth surface with no texture. The temperature in the room was around 25-27° C. Illumination conditions varied slightly due to the clouds moving outside. The cameras were mounted on a tripod and activated with the remote control.

The RAW images were converted to TIFF all with the same settings (same WB, contrast, saturation, brightness etc.), with sharpening set to the minimum and with no noise reduction.

The noise was measured with the histogram function (the standard deviation was used) in the marked area in the image (small black border rectangle).

I ran two tests, because I wasn't sure whether the results of the first test were accurate. In the first test both cameras didn't focus properly, although this shouldn't have affected the results as the grey sheet has no testure. I then put the sheet of paper on the grey chart to help the cameras to focus properly. Also, during the first test the illumination varied a bit too much (but again this didn't matter). In the end, in both tests the measurements were very close.


© Alfred Molon 2004