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Sony Mavica CD1000 Sony packs a 156 megabyte CD-R into a 2 megapixel Mavica. (Wow!) Select a topic Reference: Datasheet CD1000 Sample Images --------------------------------- 1. Intro and Highlights 2. Executive Overview 3. Design 4. Viewfinder 5. Optics 6. Exposure & Flash 7. Shutter Lag & Cycle Time Tests 8. Operation & User Interface 9. Camera Modes & Menus 10. Image Storage & Interface 11. Video, Power, Software 12. Test Results & Conclusion --------------------------------- Print-Friendly Review Version Additional Resources and Other Links Reader Comments --------------------------------- Digital Camera Comparometer (TM) --------------------------------- <-- Digital Cameras (Home) <-- Digital Camera Reviews Index <<Optics :(Previous) | (Next): Shutter Lag & Cycle Time Tests>> Page 6:Exposure & Flash Review First Posted: 7/17/2000

Exposure
With its variety of Program AE modes, the MVC-CD1000 gives you a fair amount of exposure control, although it doesn't offer the full manual control that we'd like to see on a high end camera of this sort. In addition to the standard Automatic exposure mode which controls both aperture and shutter speed, the MVC-CD1000 offers Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Twilight, Twilight Plus, Landscape and Panfocus exposure modes. Both Aperture and Shutter Priority modes give you control over the corresponding setting while the camera controls the other. As we mentioned earlier, aperture can be manually set from f/2.8 to f/11 and shutter speed spans from eight to 1/500 seconds. Manually-selected aperture values are in 1/2 f-stop increments, while the shutter speed step size varies as a function of the speed range you're working in. At very long shutter times, the steps are in full-stop (2x) increments, while at very high speeds, they're in half-stop increments. In the critical mid-range, speeds of 1/60, 1/90, 1/100, 1/125, and 1/180 are offered, giving approximately third-stop increments. The Twilight modes simply adjust the aperture and shutter speed for dark settings like night skylines and fireworks. Normal Twilight mode sets the exposure system to somewhat underexpose the image, so bright lights, the sunset, neon signs, etc won't wash out, but retain their full color. Twilight Plus makes less exposure adjustment, but boosts light sensitivity for taking pictures under darker conditions. As mentioned above, Landscape and Panfocus modes apparently only affect the lens focus, although Panfocus apparently also chooses a smaller lens aperture for greater depth of field.

When shooting in Program AE, you do have control over the exposure compensation through the display menu. You can adjust the exposure from -2.0 to +2.0 EV in 1/3 EV increments. (Each full EV unit corresponds to a doubling of halving of the exposure.) White balance is also easily controlled, by a button on the side of the camera, with options for Automatic, One-Push, Outdoor and Indoor. One-Push lets you manually adjust the white balance by placing a white card in front of the lens and pressing the manual adjustment button until the white value is set. We liked the inclusion of the spot metering mode, which takes the exposure values from the very center of the composition as opposed to averaging values from the entire image. Spot metering is useful for high contrast subjects, where you'd rather have the exposure set for a specific highlight or dark area. A self-timer (accessible through the on-screen menu) gives you a 10 second countdown on the LCD monitor, complete with an audible beep, after the shutter button is fully pressed. There's also a sharpness setting through the capture menu, which allows you to adjust the image sharpness from -2 to +2 levels, although we found differences between sharpness settings to be very subtle.

The CD1000's low-light performance is one of the areas of most dramatic improvement relative to previous Mavica models. In our testing, the camera's Automatic and Twilight exposure modes didn't do extremely well in low light situations (we got barely useable images at 0.5 foot candles, or roughly 5.5 lux), but this was still a drastic improvement over earlier models. We saw the best results when using the Shutter Priority mode, which gave us useable images as low as 1/16 foot candles, or only 0.13 lux (although the image was relatively dark, there's still a good amount of detail). This is really extraordinarily dark, and the CD1000 does as well or better in this category than the vast majority of digicams currently on the market. (June, 2000)

We suspect the exceptional low light performance of the CD1000 has much to do with its 12-bit digitization (most digicams use only 8 or 10-bit digitization). The 12-bit A/D (analog/digital) conversion of the CD1000 also shows up at the other extreme of the tonal range as well: We found that the CD1000 did an unusually good job of preserving detail in strong highlights, as seen in our outdoor portrait test shot, taken under direct sun, and in the strong highlight on the front of the house in our far-field test. The CD1000 showed really exceptional tonal range across the board.


Flash
The MVC-CD1000 is equipped with a handy pop-up flash that Sony rates as effective from 2.7 to 8.3 feet (0.6 to 2.5 m). A flash button on the back panel of the camera cycles through Automatic, Red-Eye Reduction, Forced and Suppressed flash modes. You can adjust the flash intensity through the capture menu, with options for High, Normal and Low. We like this flexibility, especially when combined with the Aperture and Shutter Priority modes. By playing with the flash intensity and other exposure settings, we found we could achieve a fair bit of control over the final images, using the flash for "fill" illumination in otherwise brightly-lit situations.

The MVC-CD1000 does have an external flash sync terminal and an accessory shoe mount on top of the camera, and we did try some shots with an external flash unit. At first we were puzzled by the very poor results we obtained--the flash apparently was fooled by the white wall behind the model and thus underexposed everything no matter what setting we used. We later learned to put a small piece of neutral-density gel over the external flash's sensor in high-key settings like this, which produced better looking, much brighter shots. Unfortunately, we learned this trick with another Sony camera, after we had sent the MVC-CD1000 test unit back, so we didn't manage to shoot any good examples of our standard indoor flash portrait test.


Movie Mode
Sony once again included the popular movie mode on the CD1000, which allows you to record both images and sound. You can record up to 60 seconds at the 160 x 112 size and up to 15 seconds at 320 x 240. Within these time frames, the camera records both image and sound as long as you hold down the shutter button. If you just press the shutter button momentarily, the camera records for 5, 10, or 15 seconds, as determined by the Record Time setting on the File menu. Movies are recorded as MPEG files and you have the same amount of exposure control as with still images. Another nice feature is that you can operate the zoom control while recording movies, for more cinematic effects.

A frequent question we've had from readers of our First Look review of the CD1000 has to do with maximum movie duration: The enormously greater storage space available on the CD-R has led many to ask whether that translates into longer movie recording time. Alas no, the movie duration is set by the CD1000's internal RAM memory, so maximum record times are the same as on the FD95. Of course, more storage space does mean you can record a lot more movies per disk, but none of them will be longer than 15 seconds in 320x240 mode, or 60 seconds at 160x112.


Special Record Modes
The MVC-CD1000 also features some additional recording modes for still images. The E-Mail option records a still image at the 320 x 240 JPEG size for easy e-mail transmission, in addition to a full-resolution one, at whatever image size you've selected in the menu system. This lets you capture full-resolution images to keep, while at the same time getting smaller versions that you can just drop into an email to share with others. The Voice option lets you record a sound byte to accompany a still image (up to 40 seconds). Finally, the Text mode records a black and white GIF-formatted image file, perfect for recording meeting notes or whiteboards. The GIF format records a high-resolution black/white image with a great deal of compression (that is, the resulting images take up very little memory space), but the penalty paid is the very long processing time required to reduce the full-color image captured by the CCD to the GIF format. (25 seconds or more for a full-resolution image.) Finally, a TIFF mode lets you capture high quality, uncompressed images at the 1600 x 1200 and 1600 (3:2) image sizes.


Picture Effects
A playful feature also carried over from some of Sony's other digicams, the Picture Effect option in the capture menu lets you get a little creative when composing images. Negative Art reverses the color and brightness of the image. Sepia and Black & White change the image into monochromatic tones. Solarize clarifies the light intensity of the image, making it look more like an illustration. Note that these options are "live" in record mode, so you get a preview of the effect on the LCD monitor before you snap the image and they add a little fun to your shooting.