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Home >> Photography >> Film Equipment Konica Revio and Nikon Zoom 310 or APS v. 35mm
This particular review will be twofold as I discuss the merits of the Konica Revio APS point and shoot and then compare it to an average 35mm point and shoot, the Nikon Zoom 310. I won’t discuss too much about the technical merits of the Konica Revio, for that I suggest you visit the Konica website for the particulars. This comparison look at APS and 35mm was made possible thanks to some friends who loaned me the Konica Revio for review. The Nikon Zoom 310 is my own unit bought a couple of years ago and since super-ceded by various One Touch Zoom models. The review was limited in scope due to lack of film choices in APS format. I could only do comparisons with color negative print film instead of my preferred slide films. This means that the films and prints have to undergo a round of questionable printing skills depending upon where I choose to develop them instead of being able to view the film itself and determine the relative merits of the camera’s exposure systems and lenses. Although slide film is available for APS there are none available locally because there are no local developers of slide APS films. A short chat with one of the clerks at Lens and Shutter revealed that the owner of Lens and Shutter and Customcolor had no interest in investing in an APS slide film developer due to zero demand for such films. This surprised me as I thought APS films could be processed in the same developers as regular E-6 films just as the C-41 APS can be developed in the same C-41 35mm machines. Thus we are left with a range of color negative films from ISO 100 to ISO 400 There are also some B&W films available based upon the color negative processing of films such as Kodak TMAX 400CN. I chose to limit my look at APS to Kodak Advantix ISO 400 color films and Kodak Royal Gold 400 for the 35mm camera to ensure a family film consistency. My friends were interested in what I had to say about the Konica Revio because they have been less then satisfied with its output from the prints they’ve developed to date. They were attracted to APS for size considerations for traveling but they were also under the impression that there would be no loss of quality from standard 4x6 inch prints from 35mm. They had seen prints produced by a Canon Elph APS camera that appeared quite sharp so they decided to take the plunge with the Konica Revio (price considerations led them to this over the Canon Elph). I had seen some of their prints taken with the Konica and I could see that the images lacked the crispness of those taken with a 35mm camera, even if only a compact point and shoot like the Nikon Zoom 310. They had a similar look as that of a 35mm negative enlarged to an 8x10 or even an 11x14 with a grainy structure and softness that are typical of enlargements. I though that this is only logical since the APS format is so much smaller then 35mm that even a 4x6 size print entails an a great deal of enlargement. APS film is only 56% the size of a regular 35mm negative so logic obviously indicates that you’ll be extremely lucky to be able to pull off a good 8x10 from an APS negative. This is what I thought was the issue at hand for my friends’ disappointment with the Konica Revio, that film size had most to do with the lack of crispness from the prints. I should note that is what I thought the problem was, lack of crispness or rather contrast as oppose to sharpness. Sharpness is defined by how many line pairs per mm can be detected on a piece of film, in other words, how much detail can you detect. Sharpness is often confused with contrast and today’s digital imaging lexicon is not helping matters any when they refer to edge contrast control as the Sharpening Tool. The more contrast in an image the sharper the print will look. Films with higher contrast are not necessarily sharper then lower contrast films but they will fool the eyes into thinking that it is. Compare Kodak Pro 1000 to Fuji NHG II 800 and you will certainly see a difference in contrast and apparent sharpness in favor of Fuji but a real technical review of the two films will indicate that the two are about equal in sharpness. (Of course I’ve ignored the issue of the paper used for printing because I’m not so familiar with such matters) So, I already had some prejudices about the Konica Revio due to my friend’s comments and from my own viewing of their prints. One of them was that the Revio’s lens was perhaps sharp enough but lacked contrast and that film size was a major contributor to the lack of contrast “sharpness” also. We’ll see how correct all of our assumptions were. The Candidates The Revio is typical of the APS styling and size. Since APS film is so small, the film canisters can be made very compact and allow a miniaturization not seen since the demise of the 110 size films and cameras. The petite dimensions of the Revio are quite striking compared to already diminutive Nikon Zoom 310. Compact 35mm P&S cameras don’t get much smaller then the Zoom 310 and I can only think of the Olympus Stylus Epic that is smaller but none else. Even so the Revio is smaller by at least 1/3 and in some ways it is a superior picture-taking machine then the Zoom 310. Small as the Revio is, it is not a plastic wonder toy like so many other compact cameras of today. The exterior finish is real metal and that adds that little extra bit of heft and solidity that the large and plastic Zoom 310 does not have. The small size of the Revio as beneficial as it is can also be a detriment for steady handholding. Proper technique is key here to ensure that the camera is held properly and that your fingers do not cover the camera’s important areas like the lens, the viewfinder or the flash. The lens is quite remarkable for its compact size yet good range. It goes wider then the Zoom 310’s 35mm minimum focal length and appears to go longer then Zoom 310’s 70mm maximum focal length (but it actually does not when viewing zoomed in prints). The lens also focuses much closer then the Zoom 310. Notice a pattern here? The Nikon Zoom 310 is looking decidedly staid and shabby compared to the more luxurious looking and feeling Revio. The Zoom 310 is plastic, the zoom range is limited and noise levels are higher in every aspect of performance such as film loading, film rewinding and lens zooming. The Zoom 310 even lacks a protective lens cover, which means that normal usage will eventually see scuff marks show up on the front element piece (already there actually). The Zoom 310 is the plane Jane girl next door that you see every day but never notice while the Konica Revio is the exotic, gilded temptress from out of town blowing kisses at all the boys. Is there substance beneath the pretty exterior shell? Is the plain old Nikon Zoom 310 of more substance then what is there superficially? Handling and Use I have to admit that I like the compact nature of the Revio. The ability to have it almost disappear in your pockets and the tourist-like look one gets when using such cameras makes for some stealth. It puts others at ease around you rather then gawking and paying attention to a big pro-sized SLR. I would dispense with the protective case as it just adds bulk (slight as it is) and gets in the way of quick shooting. The Revio is quite simple to use with one button used to scroll through the various functions indicated on the rear LCD screen. It does suffer from cheesy consumerism that the Japanese can’t seem to help themselves with such as message typing options onto the print in addition to the regular date/time imprinter. Serious users eschew such useless features (or at least this one does). The Revio also has the now standard three sizes of prints to choose from. The Classic 4x6 print, the HDTV 4x7 print and the Panoramic 4x10 print. The 4x7 HDTV size is the actual full frame configuration of APS cameras and the Classic size crops the outer edges to create smaller prints whereas the Panoramic crops the top and lower portions. This is not a good things as you lose valuable negative space in an already tiny piece of film and when you enlarge to 4x10 you’re not getting much quality to work with. The Revio does not have the ability to reload partially exposed rolls of film. This I found out after removing the barely used roll of film my friends had in the camera in exchange for the rolls I had bought. Not good and a rather embarrassing explanation to them about how I assumed that it was mid-roll exchange capable (no manual was supplied). The Zoom 310 is also straightforward in operation if more bereft of features then the Revio. I’ve had the Zoom 310 for a few years and had originally intended it as a present to my father to atone for my sin of selling his Canon FTb. But unfortunately, almost all modern P&S cameras suffer from tiny viewfinders and a man of 70 plus years does not take kindly to such miserably tiny views. On his month long trip to China my father kept handing the Zoom 310 to my father-in-law every time he wanted a picture taken because his twitchy eyes couldn’t see the tiny view. The Zoom 310 has otherwise provided acceptable but not necessarily outstanding performance since I’ve bought it. Note that this is in comparison to the Nikon SLRs and the high quality lenses I’ve owned in the past few years so it shouldn’t be taken as a dumping of the Zoom 310.
The above reveals the trend towards miniturization in the world of electronics thanks to the microchip revolution. The old home recording standby of cassette tape (invented by Phillips in the 1960s for dictation purposes) has been supplanted in convenience and quality by Sony's Minidisc, seen on the right. This Minidisc player is the most recent portable recordable model (October 2000) and you can see how tiny it is in comparison to the old tape. The Konica Revio is of the same mold for diminutiveness. Technical Talk I chose Kodak Advantix 400 film for use in the Konica and Kodak Royal Gold 400 in the Nikon so as to keep the films in the same family, hoping for some consistency. My shooting time was limited and keeping in mind who APS is marketed for I decided not to get too intense in testing and therefore did not buy more types of films to try and compare against. If I had the time and a bigger wallet then I certainly would have liked to try some ISO 100 films and the black and white Color Negative processing films from Kodak. I went with ISO 400 films because it is what I would normally use if I used such cameras on a regular basis. Even with my Nikon SLRs, I mostly use ISO 400 films when taking family snapshots and only in very dark shooting situations would I use ISO 800 films. I can’t even remember the last time I used ISO 100 or 200 color print films. ISO 400 is a nice all around speed to use indoors and outdoors and today’s film technology (actually thanks to APS film, believe it or not) is much improved from even a few years ago so that little to no lost of quality is noted by using higher speed films. I very much look forward to the time Agfa will have an ISO 800 film with the grain of ISO 100 films. Could be much sooner then many think. With film at hand and loaded into the respective cameras I went off on a couple of lunch hours to shoot off some frames around the West End of Vancouver’s downtown peninsula. Vancouver is not generally known for its architecture like Montreal is but there are a few buildings around that provide a bit of that old world look and charm. I remembered one area of the West End that reminded me of Montreal and sought it out for some shots. Perhaps it was the bricks used for the front façade that gave the buildings a more classic and cultured look. Everywhere in Montreal you see bricks or stones in the buildings whereas Vancouver is newer and seemed to have followed the 1960’s trend for prefabricated concrete for many of the West End apartment buildings. Only one word to describe it, UGLY! After the West End session I headed off to the BC Law Courts directly across the street from where I work. This building is also mostly concrete and many would certainly say it is ugly but the Law Courts look more like a planetarium with its triangular glass and metal frame upper structure. Here I finished off the first rolls of films. Next day I headed off to Canada Place and tried some shots there. I used a tabletop tripod for some of the shots to see if this might help the cameras with any vibration problems that could be caused by handshake. I would have preferred different times for testing since midday light is hardly a good time to do anything more then reconnaissance snapshots for future reference. Add to the bad light, a haze so prevalent in Vancouver on relatively clear days (pollution?) that it would ruin most of the shots I took and obscure details. I also took some shots indoors at night with the flash to see how that would work out. And out of all this what did I end up with? Some surprising results that I didn’t expect and some results that I did expect. When comparing 4x6 sized prints from both cameras, the results were close and only when doing direct comparisons could I detect that the APS print was not quite as good as the 35mm print. I’d say that APS was about 80% of the way there to the 35mm print with some softness and grain seen in some the prints. But show that 4x6 print to a person without knowing what format of film had been used and I doubt anyone would ever say anything was amiss. The fact that a film format that is almost 50% smaller then 35mm can still produce a reasonable quality print is commendable. Going beyond the 4x6 sized classic print and into the 4x7 sized HDTV print is where some degradation of the print becomes noticeable and most experienced shooters would probably be able to detect that something was amiss with the quality of the print. Go further in print size to the 4x10 panorama and pretty much everyone is going to be able to detect the very noticeable degradation in the quality of the print. Before dismissing APS further I should note that degradation in the print is going to be a given since the negative is being enlarged to such a large degree for the HDTV and panorama formats. Also, I was comparing those enlargements directly to the 4x6 35mm prints and really, to make things more fair, I should have been comparing 8x10 or 8x12 sized prints from the 35mm negatives. BUT I very much doubt that anyone who buys into APS would actually enlarge the negative beyond the 4x10 panorama. We must keep in mind that APS has been marketed to the lowest common denominator type of consumer. The unthinking type who doesn’t want to be bothered with ambient light exposure calculations or fumbling with film canisters for loading or anything else that would inconvenience the person. I won’t suggest that these aren’t things that I or other photographers wouldn’t enjoy benefiting from but not at the expense of quality. We must also keep in mind that 35mm is already a compromised format in itself and one that should represent the minimum that any serious photographer should accept. It wasn’t that long ago that many of the press photographers who now use 35mm cameras, used 4x5 large format Speed Graphic cameras to ensure adequate print quality. Other aspects of the prints from APS and 35mm revealed a very definite colorcast that was generally not in favour of APS. The APS prints were very cool in tone and had increased blue tones but especially green ones whereas the 35mm prints were warmer and noticeably superior in red tone saturation. This discrepancy I’m not sure what to make of and where to lay responsibility. I don’t suspect the printer to be at fault since the tones were consistent in the four rolls of film shot for both cameras but the difference was such that an unsuspecting viewer would never guess that the films came from the same company. Now whether this is due to the film itself or from the quality of the lens in the cameras is the key question and this is where I would have loved to shoot some transparency film to isolate the colorcast and determine whether the film is responsible or the lens. I personally found the prints from the 35mm camera to be more pleasing as it gave the prints more vitality, especially and obviously when red tones were in the scene. The Nikon also underexposed the scenes slightly, which also contributed to the superior saturation. The prints from the Konica had increased exposure times but they also seemed a bit more washed out, almost as if a bit of flair had been induced into the scene. This brings up another minus of the Konica’s performance, backlit scenes in which the sun is visible in a portion of the viewfinder (but not close to where the meter sensor should be) suffered from underexposure. Earlier in this report I mentioned the use of a tabletop tripod for some of the shots to see if this might help with the sharpness of the prints. I wasn’t sure if the use of a tripod and the self timer feature of the cameras for hands free operation would actually amount to anything for prints as small as 4x6 but surprisingly I could actually detect some differences. Yes indeed the use of the tripod and lack of any handshake did result in sharper prints for the APS. One scene of the North Shore mountains as taken from Canada Place had some boats in the foreground, one of which had its name visible. Using this nameplate as well as some other details in the foreground I could certainly see that the shots with tripod were sharper. Unfortunately, the tripod shots from APS only came close in matching the quality of the prints from the handheld 35mm camera. Various detail elements in the scene were still not sharply delineated compared to 35mm prints. This tells me that one of the major marketing points of APS is also a major detriment to image quality. The tiny size of APS works against it as the lack of something substantial for the hands to hold onto as well as the lack of mass actually allows vibration from handshake to rob sharpness from an already small film. This is another reason why I would never recommend the enlargement of an APS negative to 8x10 sizes. The 35mm point and shoot also suffers from this lack of mass too despite it being bigger and slightly heavier. The Zoom 310 is still too small and lightweight to be able to dampen handshake like that of a full size SLR and high quality lens. So what do we have so far?
A brief comparison overview of APS and 35mm point and shoot cameras is not going to reveal the best of either format. As good as the Nikon Zoom 310 was against the Konica Revio, it falls short when compared against its bigger cousins from the Nikon SLR range. A look at some other prints I shot off recently of fall colored leaves using my F100 and 80-200mm f2.8 lens reveals the potential of the 35mm format. Tripod mounted and use of a cable release produced some exquisitely sharp looking prints (4x6 size only though) with the only weakness being the lack of depth of field due to the need to keep the wind at bay with a faster shutter speed. I did some shots with fill-flash and the results with full blown 3D Matrix fill flash were quite awful but when in standard TTL mode with a minus 1.7 fill setting then the results were more acceptable but I found the shots in straight ambient light to be the best. Maybe I might have been able to obtain the same quality from the point and shoot cameras and I suspect the Zoom 310 on a tripod and self-timer feature, would actually come close but I would be quite surprised if the Konica Revio did and I suspect that it would not. Once upon a time I might
have considered an APS camera as being the perfect carry along at all
times but since trying out a typical APS point and shoot, I very much
doubt that I ever would again and honestly I don’t think you should
either. Below are some scans of the shots I took and described above. They were scanned from the 4x6 sized prints with the Epson 1200 flatbed scanner and no editing save for cropping was done. Although I had a look at what Auto Levels and Sharpening would do in Photoshop, I did not find that either did much to original scans and therefore did not use the features. The Epson 1200 did a good enough job in keeping the scans accurate to the original prints and allowing the differences to be easily seen.
Link to Konica |
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
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This
is a detail shot of the above scene, magnified to get close into the numbers
and letters of the signs and names. This is from the APS print and the
camera was mounted on a small table top tripod and the self timer feature
was utilized to ensure zero hand shake. The results indicates that APS
is just not able to match 35mm quality even when comparing a tripod mounted
APS shot to a handheld 35mm shot. 
This
is a shot from a handheld 35mm print and we can see that this shot is
sharper then the above APS image despite the fact that the APS camera
had the benefit of a tripod and a self timer for making the exposure. 
This
is a shot from the 35mm print with the camera mounted on the same table
top tripod and utilizing the self timer feature to ensure zero vibration.
It is clearly the sharpest of the three images and what I found surprising
was that I could detect the qualitative differences even from the 4x6
sized prints. I found it a bit harder to notice the differences between
the tripod APS shot and the handheld 35mm shot but the tripod 35mm shot
was noticeably sharper with the naked eye. 