My wife and I recently attended Oak Park's annual
Wright Plus Walk, and happened both to photograph the
Nathan G. Moore House looking north from the porch
of the Hills-DeCaro House during the tour. My wife
used her Olympus Stylus Epic with Kodak Gold 400 print
film; I used my Leica CM with Kodak Gold 200 print film.
Both images were taken almost the same time, from the
same location. Both rolls were processed identically.
When we received our prints we both noticed the
differences right away: the Leica print had notably
better color and sharpness.
This is not a precise comparison as we used different
films and the cameras have slightly different focal
lengths (35 for the Stylus vs 40mm for the Leica). The
better color quality in the Leica CM example is probably due in
part to the slower film used. However, the faster film should
have given the Stylus an advantage in shutter speed, as well as
higher contrast. Instead the Leica exposure has superior sharpness,
color contrast, and saturation. This is
consistent with what I've found generally, and I suppose
is to be expected of a camera costing 10 times as much.
Both images
below are scanned from the original negatives with my
Nikon LS-40, 2900 dpi, identical scan settings except for
the scanner's automatic exposure control and my manual
white balance adjustment. To see closeups of the original
2900 dpi scans, roll your mouse over the grey rectangles
in either image.
Olympus Stylus Epic, Kodak Gold 400
Leica CM, Kodak Gold 200
To demonstrate that the above differences are not due to the scanning process, here's a scan I took with an Epson Perfection 2400 flatbed scanner of both negatives at once (the Leica CM is at the bottom):
