Casio QV-3500EX, First Few Snapshots

Below are some un-edited snapshots from the QV-3500EX and the calibration of the digicam is demonstrated also.

How to view this page correctly

Use a native PC system that is not gamma corrected (or if you are on a Mac system set the gamma space to 2.5) and verify that the blackpoint of the monitor is accurately set.

more about this calibration chart here

Casio QV-3500EX Photometry

The Casio QV-3500EX digicam has the Epson Print Matching -technology that could be described as the second generation of color-management in consumer grade digicams. The first generation had no color-management at all, just guesswork.

The device space of the QV3500EX was calibrated using the XLProfiler using the following photometry related camera settings:

• Contrast: Low
• Saturation: Normal
• Whitebalance: Daylight
• Sharpening: Low

Contrast settings normal and high change the tonality only in the light portion of the range, dark end remaining essentially the same, the low setting calibrated the best.

About the Sharpening

In-camera sharpening of what ever digital camera is always of much worse quality than what can be achieved in Photoshop since the digicams simply do not have such computing power that is needed for high quality sharpening considering that the digicam has to finalize the images in a couple of seconds and during that time it has to do much more than the sharpening. Therefore the in-camera sharpening was set to low, that actually means that the in-camera sharpening is disabled. This also makes the rapid sequential shooting a little faster.

Final calibrated versions of the photos (for viewing on uncalibrated PC system)

The editing for all the calibrated versions on this page was the same:

1. Open to Photoshop v 6.0.1 into AIM RGB pro working-space.
2. Convert to 16-bit/c mode.
3. Apply calibration Curves.
4. Apply calibration ChannelMixer.
5. Apply USM at 200/0.5/1.
6. Resample down to 1365x1024 pixel size.
7. Apply manual White-point correction using Levels dialog.
8. Apply USM at 200 / 0.5 / 0.
9. Convert to nativePC profile.
10. Convert to 8-bit/c mode.
11. Save as JPEG at compression quality 9.

Applied as a single click on an Action button (the Action shows the Level dialog for the manual white-point adjustment).

The calibration files are here.

Other camera settings

All images were shot in 2048x1536 size with Jpeg compression Fine (similar as SHQ in some other digicams). It is a real shame that the camera does not provide a less aggressive JPEG compression mode (or a CCD RAW mode), since with the 1GB microdrive the storage space is no problem.

The Noise Level

The calibrated images are only 1.3MP in size (by linear scaling to 66.66%, that reduces the surface area down to 44.44% from the original). This size is the absolutely maximum usable size for this digicam, the downscaling helps greatly in reducing the noise. Even then the images are somewhat noisy, most apparent in the Q-60 shot due to the large smooth areas in the chart. However the QV3500EX has quite similar high noise level like all the other 3.x MP digicams have, compare the original camera images to the other digicams, not the calibrated versions.

Click the below thumbnails to show the images in the larger size.
Originals Large photos are unedited 3MP camera photos. Thumbnails are camera photos that are sharpened using Photoshop USM 140/0.5/0	Converted for PC For viewing in native PC system (that is not gamma corrected but has accurately set blackpoint. These are 1.3MP (1365x1024 pixels).