We run a few tests on every camera that we review to determine the image quality of the pictures the camera will provide. We did the same on these cameras to determine which one delivers the best pictures with the best colors, most detail, and least noise. Which one gets the best pictures for the buck?

Color Reproduction (Nikon wins) - The first thing I noticed about the Nikon L19 when I uploaded the photos were the colors. They really pop out. This came through in our testing, where the L19 oversaturated by more than 20 percent. The Nikon’s colors were less accurate though; the Olympus FE-25 actually fared better in remaining true to color (when manually white balanced anyway; when left to auto white balance, the Nikon remained the truer of the two). The Nikon L19’s most errant colors were in the cooler tones: mostly blues. The Olympus, however, erred on the warmer end of the spectrum: the yellows and oranges were grossly exaggerated. At a glance, I’ll admit that I like the Nikon L19’s colors better simply because of the saturation. The Olympus FE-25 under-saturated by 11 percent and made colors look underwhelming.

Overall, the FE-25 had the truer colors in perfect conditions – when the ISO was set to its lowest and the white balance was set manually – but because of their under-saturation, the Nikon L19’s colors looked more striking straight out of the camera and will likely be more pleasing to the majority of snapshooters.
 

Nikon Coolpix L19

Olympus FE-25

Nikon Coolpix L19	Olympus FE 25

Noise (Nikon wins) – Throughout our battery of tests, the Nikon Coolpix L19 consistently produced less noise. This is true when the lights are bright and when they are dim, as you’ll read in the next section.
 
Low Light (Nikon wins) – With the cameras set to Auto and the lights dimmed, the Nikon Coolpix L19 selected an ISO 1600 setting  and spewed out five percent of the image as noise. Colors tended to be over-saturated and inaccurate, especially when the camera wasn’t manually white balanced. The Olympus FE-25, which chose an ISO of 400, severely under-saturated images and garnered inaccurate colors as well. The Olympus FE-25 had between 4-6.5 percent of noise in its images. All things considered, the Nikon Coolpix L19 has much better capabilities in low light, but its images are far from perfect.
 

Nikon Coolpix L19

Olympus FE 25

Resolution (Olympus wins) – The Nikon Coolpix L19 offers 8 megapixels while the Olympus FE-25 has 10 megapixels on its image sensor. A few shots of the industry standard GretagMacbeth resolution chart confirms this difference: the Olympus recorded much finer detail, sometimes twice as much. There are some catches though: the FE-25 employed extreme over-sharpening of its images, sometimes going 50 percent beyond the norm (the detrimental artifacts resulting from this appear as white outlines or "halos" around the edges of the numbers in the chart below, right). The Nikon, however, consistently under-sharpened by a few percentage points making the images much easier to fix in a photo editing program, though the photos won't appear quite as sharp right out-of-the-camera.

Since most buyers of these digital cameras aren’t likely to bother with post-processing, we’re handing the best resolution award to the Olympus simply for its output sharpness. Unfortunately, the detail isn't quite there on either camera.

 

Nikon Coolpix L19	Olympus FE 25