Sony MVC-CD500Sony further expands its CD-equipped camera line, adding a five megapixel CCD and a host of other features to last year's top-of-the-line CD Mavica model.<<Optics :(Previous) | (Next): Shutter Lag & Cycle Time Tests>> Page 6:Exposure & FlashReview First Posted: 06/09/2003 |
Exposure
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Exposure control on the CD500 is just as straightforward and uncomplicated
as on the CD400 model. A Mode dial on top of the camera lets you quickly select
major camera operating modes. Additional control buttons on the back panel let
you change basic exposure settings, such as metering options, exposure compensation,
and AE Lock with a single button-push. The small Command wheel (on the right
side of the camera back) simplifies exposure adjustment even more, by allowing
you to change exposure compensation, manual focus, aperture, and shutter speed,
simply by first using it to select the functioned desired, pressing in to highlight
the function, and then turning it to make adjustments. (This is actually much
simpler than it sounds, particularly once you get used to how the control works.)
Four main exposure modes offer varying levels of automatic or manual control:
Program AE, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, and Manual. In Program AE mode,
the camera controls the basic exposure (although Program Shift lets you can
change the combination of f-stop and shutter speed), but lets you determine
all other variables, such as ISO, white balance, and flash settings. Shutter
Priority lets you set the shutter speed from 1/1,000 to eight seconds, while
the camera controls the lens aperture. Alternately, Aperture Priority mode lets
you set the lens aperture from f/2.0 (f/2.5 with the lens set at telephoto)
to f/8.0 while the camera sets the appropriate shutter speed. In both Aperture
and Shutter Priority modes, the shutter and aperture values will flash in the
LCD panel (when the Shutter button is pressed halfway) if the camera disagrees
with the chosen settings. This gives you an opportunity to adjust the exposure
without wasting a shot.
Manual exposure mode provides complete control over aperture settings, shutter
speed, ISO, white balance, and metering. The camera reports the amount of under-
or overexposure it thinks you've selected, with an EV value in the LCD monitor
just above the aperture and shutter speed settings. If the camera disagrees
with the shutter and aperture values, the EV value will flash in the LCD panel
(when the Shutter button is pressed halfway), warning you to change the settings
for a better exposure. In all four adjustable modes (Aperture Priority, Shutter
Priority, Manual, and Program Shift), the Command wheel adjusts the aperture
or shutter speed settings. An arrow on the LCD screen points to the adjustable
setting, such as aperture or shutter speed. Pressing in on the wheel selects
that setting, highlighting it in yellow, and allowing you to make adjustments
by simply turning the wheel. Pressing on the wheel a second time deselects the
setting, removing the yellow highlight, so that you can scroll to any other
adjustable setting. I recall having some trouble with the Command wheel on the
CD300, apparently because I sometimes pressed it too rapidly. I had no trouble
whatsoever with the Command wheel on this model.
In addition to the four main exposure modes, there are six preset Scene modes
to adjust the camera for shooting for specific situations: Twilight, Twilight
Portrait, Landscape, Portrait, Snow, and Beach. Twilight mode adjusts the exposure
to capture a bright subject in dark surroundings (neon lights would be a good
example), without washing out the color. Because Twilight mode usually employs
a slower shutter speed, a tripod is recommended to prevent blurring from camera
movement. Twilight Portrait works along similar lines, but uses the flash in
a slow-sync setting to capture a fully-illuminated subject in front of the darker
background. Landscape mode uses a smaller aperture setting to keep both the
background and foreground in sharp focus, allowing you to capture broad vistas
of scenery. Portrait mode uses a larger lens aperture setting to decrease the
depth of field, keeping the subject in sharp focus, with the background slightly
blurred. Snow preserves color despite the glare of bright scenes like snowscapes
and optimizes focus like landscape. Beach exposes for the blue of the water
in seaside of lakeside scenes where automatic exposure systems are often fooled.
By default, the CD500 uses Multi-pattern Metering system, taking exposure readings
throughout the image to determine the best overall exposure. A Center-Weighted
Metering option determines exposure by the brightness of the subject at the
center of the image. For high-contrast subjects, a Spot Metering option (selected
via the Menu button on the back panel) takes the exposure reading from the very
center of the frame. A center crosshair target appears on the LCD monitor (inside
the focus brackets), to show the location of the spot exposure reading. For
metering off-center subjects, you can take your reading of the subject you want
metered, then use the AE Lock button on the back panel to lock the exposure
reading. Once exposure is locked, you can recompose the image and release the
shutter. Spot metering is very handy when dealing with difficult subjects, such
as portrait shots with strong backlighting, or any subject that's substantially
brighter or darker than the background.
Exposure compensation can be manually adjusted from -2 to +2 exposure values
(EV) in one-third-step increments, in all exposure modes except Manual. The
camera's light sensitivity can be set through the Record menu to Auto, or 100,
200, or 400 ISO equivalents, increasing the camera's low-light shooting capabilities
with higher ISO settings. For exposures longer than 1/25 second, the CD500 automatically
employs a Noise Reduction system, to minimize the colored pixels in dark backgrounds
common with long shutter times. In my testing, I found the CD500's noise reduction
processing to be very effective at eliminating so-called "hot pixels"
in long time exposures. (Do note though, that the CD500 takes twice as long
to complete an exposure when the noise reduction system is active. This is because
it actually takes two exposures, one of the subject, and one with the shutter
closed, to measure the sensor noise so it can subtract it back out of the photo.
Thus, at the maximum exposure time of 8 seconds, the camera will actually be
tied up for 16 seconds for each exposure.)
White Balance (WB) can also be controlled in all exposure modes except Auto,
with available settings of Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent, Incandescent,
and One-Push (manual setting). One-Push lets you set the camera's white balance
by pointing it at a white card and telling it to use that color as a reference.
As with many other Sony cameras, the CD500 offers a Picture Effects menu, providing
a little in-camera creativity. Settings like Solarize, Sepia, and Negative Art
can add interest to your images by altering color or reversing the highlights
and shadows.
The CD500 also offers a menu selection for adjusting image sharpening in-camera,
providing normal, plus and minus values. The default value of normal is fine
for most uses, but you might want to boost the sharpness a bit if your shots
will be printed on a low-quality inkjet printer. On the other hand, the minus
sharpness setting may be useful for images that you plan to manipulate in Photoshop
or any other image editing application. In these programs, you typically want
to apply sharpening at the end of the manipulation process. Finally, a 10-second
self-timer can be activated by pressing the down Arrow button on the back panel.
Once the Shutter button has been fully depressed, the small LED lamp on the
front of the camera counts down the seconds until the shutter is released (a
green dot in the LCD monitor flashes as well). You can cancel the timer by pressing
the down Arrow button again.
When you have images stored on the CD-R, the left arrow key on the Arrow rocker
button (back panel) activates a quick review of the previously captured image,
and offers a delete option for removing the image. Pressing the arrow key a
second time returns you to the normal image display screen, as does pressing
the Shutter button halfway.
Flash
The built-in, pop-up flash on the CD500 has four settings that are activated
by pressing the Flash button on the Arrow rocker pad: Auto, Forced, Slow Synchro,
and Suppressed. Auto puts the camera in charge of whether or not the flash
fires, based on existing light levels. Forced Flash means that the flash always
fires, regardless of light level. Slow Synchro always fires the flash, like
Forced Flash, but also leaves the shutter open longer, to capture more of
the ambient light on the background. Suppressed Flash prevents the flash from
firing, regardless of light levels. The flash is released from its compartment
once the Shutter button is halfway pressed in either Auto or Forced modes.
A Red-Eye Reduction mode is activated through the Setup menu, and works in
Auto, Forced, and Slow Synchro flash modes. (Thus technically making the CD500's
flash an 8-mode system.) Red-Eye Reduction fires a small pre-flash to reduce
the occurrence of red-eye effect in people pictures. When shooting in Twilight
Portrait mode, the camera times the flash with the slower shutter speed, so
that subjects in the foreground are well lit, and the darker background shows
more ambient light.
You can adjust the flash intensity to High, Normal, or Low through the Record
menu. This option makes the flash more accommodating to varying light levels
or different subjects. I liked the fact that I could adjust exposure for the
flash and ambient lighting separately, a feature that makes it easier to achieve
more balanced exposures. In Normal mode, flash range extends from 1.6 inches
to 16.4 feet (0.5 to 5.0 meters), an almost 2 meter increase in range over
the earlier CD300 model.
An external flash sync socket is located on the left side of the camera, directly
above the digital and video jack compartment. I was very pleased to see the
addition of a hot shoe mount to the CD400 (the previous CD300 model featured
a "cold" shoe with no contacts), doubly so to see it continued here,
with added contacts for Sony's new HVL-F32X external flash unit. Through the
Setup menu, you can turn the hot shoe on or off. Where the CD400's hot shoe
contained only a single contact, the shoe on the CD500 is adorned with no
fewer than five. The added contacts interact with Sony's recently-introduced
HVL-F32X flash, which boasts a host of useful features, including super-bright
autofocus-assist illuminator LEDs, and (most importantly) true through the
lens (TTL) flash metering when paired with the CD500 and Sony's new DSC-V1.
(Read our
news article on the HVL-F32X from the Spring 2003 PMA show, for more
info on its functions.) The hot shoe naturally also functions as a conventional
"dumb" shoe, a real boon to photographers who have one or more non-dedicated
strobes in their gear kit, or for those who want to use the CD500 with studio
strobes. (A side note although: Be careful that you don't connect
a studio pack with high trigger voltage to the hot shoe of the CD500! Digicam
sync contacts aren't designed to handle high voltages, and you risk frying
your camera if you plug in studio equipment directly. - Look for a "safe
trigger" unit that uses a low voltage to trigger the strobes. Likewise,
avoid certain older shoe-mount amateur strobes, such as the "HV"
units from Vivitar, which present high voltages to the sync contacts.)
Movie and Sound Recording
Like the CD400 before it, the CD500 also offers audio recording. In any of
the CD500's still capture modes, you can record short sound clips to accompany
images. This option is available through the Record menu by selecting the
Voice Record mode. You can record up to 40 seconds of sound for each image
by holding down the Shutter button after you've snapped the photo. By pressing
and releasing the Shutter button quickly, you can record a five-second, fixed-length
clip. In playback mode, you can play any sound clips by pressing the OK button
in the center of the multi-controller rocker switch.
The Movie mode is accessed on the Mode dial on top of the camera by selecting
the film frame icon. You can record moving images with sound at either
640 x 480-pixel VGA resolution or 160 x 112-pixel email resolution. The CD500
incorporates Sony's latest "MPEGMovie VX" technology, which permits
recording times at even the 640x480 resolution that are limited only by available
CD storage capacity. Maximum recording time with a blank CD is 5 minutes 51
seconds for the VGA quality level, and a 89 minutes an 11 seconds at the email
resolution setting. Movies captured at the email resolution setting play back
on the camera's LCD screen at a reduced size, while VGA-quality ones play
back full-screen.
While the high resolution of VGA mode and long recording times of email mode are very impressive, you really shouldn't consider the CD500 as a viable stand-in for a true camcorder. Its image quality in email mode is pretty rough, and its frame rate at both resolution settings is well below that of conventional camcorders. The CD500 is excellent for "video snapshots," and might be useful for capturing short clips of action for assembly in a video-editing program, but its audio quality isn't in the same league as that of a good-quality camcorder. In quiet moments of the recording, I could easily hear the faint twittering of the CD drive as it recorded the data. - It seems that Sony's camcorder engineers still have some things to teach the still camera group about sonic isolation between drive mechanics and the camera's microphone. Also, in common with essentially every other digicam offering movie recording with sound, you can't actuate the CD500's zoom lens while you're recording a movie, presumably because the sound of the lens motor would be too obtrusive. (You can adjust the zoom lens however you like before recording, but once recording has begun, the focal length of the lens is fixed.) Bottom line, you'll still want a camcorder if you need o do a lot of general video recording.
Clip Motion and Multi Burst
This is a slick little feature that I've really enjoyed on recent Sony digicams. Clip motion first appeared on the Sony DSC-P1, and now seems to be a pretty standard option on all the latest Sony models. The Clip Motion capture mode turns the CD500 into an animation camera, recording up to 10 frames of still images, which are combined within the camera into a single GIF file for animated playback. Frames can be captured at any time interval, with successive presses of the Shutter button. When you've captured as many photos as you need, you just press the center of the Four Way Arrow pad to tell the camera to finish the sequence, and it merges all the images into one animated GIF file. Available image sizes are Normal (160 x 120 pixels) and Mobile (120 x 108 pixels), and the number of actual captured frames may vary with image size (Mobile is restricted to two frames) and available CD space. (You have a maximum of 10 in Normal size mode, but could be constrained to fewer if your disc is nearly full.) Files are saved in GIF format, and are played back with (approximate) 0.5-second intervals between frames. Unlike Movie mode, the onboard flash may be used with Clip Motion. Note though, that the GIF format only permits 256 colors, far less than millions the camera normally captures.
Multi-Burst is a newer recording option I first noticed on the DSC-P51 and DSC-P71 Cyber-Shot models. The mode captures an extremely rapid burst of images, stored as a single 1280x960 frame on the camera, which are played back as a single movie (giving a slow-motion effect). You can select between Fine and Normal quality settings, and available frame intervals include 1/7.5, 1/15, or 1/30 second. When viewed on a computer though, the images simply appear as a single 1280x960 image with the individual frames arranged as 16 small sub-images within it.
Special Record Modes
Like many Sony digicams, the CD500 gives you several file format options for still images. Through the Record menu, you can select TIFF for uncompressed images, Voice (mentioned above), E-mail, Exposure Bracketing, Burst 3, or Normal modes. E-mail mode records a smaller (320 x 240-pixel) image size that takes less time to transmit to friends and family by e-mail. The e-mail image is recorded in addition to the image size selected through the Record menu's Image Size option. (The TIFF option likewise records a maximum-resolution TIFF image in addition to a JPEG at whatever size and quality setting you've selected.) Burst 3 mode lets you capture a maximum of three frames in rapid succession, at 0.5 second intervals. Actual frame rates might vary with the image resolution and the amount of information to be recorded, but in all my tests, it came in at a solid 0.5 seconds per frame. In Exposure Bracketing mode, the camera takes a series of three images at different exposure readings: one at the normal meter reading, and two more at different EV settings. The exposure variance between shots is set through the Setup menu, through the "Bracket Step" option, with settings of +/- 1.0, 0.7, and 0.3 EV.
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