Sony MVC-FD97Sony adds a Memory Stick and USB to the FD95 - No more file-compression blues!<<Optics :(Previous) | (Next): Shutter Lag & Cycle Time Tests>> Page 6:Exposure & FlashReview First Posted: 2/9/2001 |
Exposure
With its variety of Program AE modes, the MVC-FD97 gives you a fair amount of exposure control, although it still 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 Program AE automatic exposure mode which controls both aperture and shutter speed, the MVC-FD97 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 midrange, 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 instead 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. When spot metering is enabled, a target crosshair appears in the center of the LCD display. 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 vary the image sharpness from -2 to +2 in arbitrary units, although we found differences between sharpness settings to be very subtle.
FlashThe MVC-FD97 is equipped with a handy pop-up flash that Sony rates as effective from 2.7 to 8.3 feet (0.6 to 2.5m). 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. An external flash sync connection and an accessory shoe mount on top of the camera (without flash contacts) give you even more control over flash exposures - a benefit we always appreciate.
Movie Mode
Sony once again included the popular Movie mode on the FD97, which allows you to record both images and sound. You can record up to 60 seconds at the 160 x 112 resolution 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 five, 10, or 15 seconds, as determined by the Record Time setting of the File menu. The amount of time recorded is shown on the LCD display, just below the number of captured files. Movies are recorded as MPEG files and you have the same amount of exposure control as with still images, with the exception of the flash. Another nice feature is that you can operate the zoom control while recording movies, for more cinematic effects.
Special Recording Modes
Like the FD95, the FD97 offers a number of special recording modes, as well as a few new ones of its own. 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 e-mail to share with others. Somewhat the converse of E-Mail mode, the TIFF option saves a 1600x1200 uncompressed TIFF version of each image, in addition to the standard JPEG version at whatever image size you've selected. TIFF mode is only available when using a Memory Stick for storage, since each file is larger than the capacity of a floppy disk. (The TIFF menu option simply disappears when you switch to a floppy disk for image storage.)
The Voice option lets you record a sound clip to accompany a still image (up to 40 seconds). It may be used in either Memory Stick or floppy disk storage modes. 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 and 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. (Twenty-five seconds or more for a full-resolution image.)
Clip Motion
New to the Mavica series is the Clip Motion capture mode, first seen last year in Sony's CyberShot line. Enabled through the record menu, this feature turns the FD97 into an animation camera, recording up to 10 frames of still images to be played back in succession as an animated GIF. Frames can be captured at any 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 rocker control button to tell the camera to finish the sequence. Available image sizes are Normal (160 x 120) and Mobile (80 x 72), and the number of actual captured frames may vary with image size and available Memory Stick space. (You have a maximum of 10, but could be constrained to fewer if your memory was very full.) Files are saved in the GIF format, and are played back with approximate 0.5 second intervals between frames. Unlike Movie mode, the flash is available with Clip Motion.
Picture Effects
A playful feature that Sony continues to include with their 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 divides colors and tones in the image into discrete levels, 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.
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