This misses the real point about the "muddy shadows" reference to the ZD, which is user error, not a camera limitation. There are many variables in how any manufacturer sets up their equipment, quite apart from the hardware limitations themselves. These variables outweigh simplistic assumptions based solely on bit depth. Hence my earlier reference to 12 bit drum scanners blowing away 16 bit CCD scanners - just as some dslrs clip the highlights more readily than others, and the same chip in two different cameras may give very different results.
You have to look at the whole package.
Quentin
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=0\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
well i downloaded raw samples again and looked at them 50, 100 and 125iso with perfect exposure, nice even histogram, nothing clipped....all 3 show what i consider muddy shadows, just like the canons...neither the P20 nor the P30 show any sign of this.....even at higher iso (400, 800) they get grainier, noisier but they maintain more information.....maybe i am crazy, but that is totally obvious on my screen.....
none of this makes the ZD bad...not at all....but there is a difference and it is up to the individual to judge if that difference is worth the extra money....
my friend called me today again, (i pointed the back out to him and he has been looking at anything he can find about it).....he told me about the buffer and that it can shoot 11 exposures at 1.2 frames/sec and one has to wait 100sec for the buffer to clear after that!!!?? don't know if this is true, i had heard that it is bad but that is completely unuseable for portrait, fashion, editorial.....i mean of course some people shoot 4x5 portrait, but that is a different story......even if the 100sec are wrong and it is actually only 45sec, it is too long.......for someone shooting landscape, or architecture this does not matter at all of course......so it comes down to what you use the back for......and i am sure for a lot of people it is a great solution....