Toshiba PDR-M70Toshiba brings true photographic features to their new 3 flagship model!<<Design :(Previous) | (Next): Optics>> Page 4:ViewfinderReview First Posted: 8/17/2000 |
ViewfinderThe PDR-M70 offers both an optical viewfinder and an LCD monitor for composing images. The real-image optical viewfinder zooms along with the lens and features small, black crosshairs in the center of the field of view, for lining up shots. It also features a dioptric adjustment dial, to accommodate the needs of eyeglass wearers. On the outside edge of the viewfinder, a small, red and green LED clues you in to the camera's status (i.e., if the focus is set, flash is ready, etc.).
The 1.8 inch color LCD monitor on the back panel can be turned on and off through the Record menu, which is an interesting method (we're accustomed to a Display button). Once activated, the LCD monitor reports a great deal of camera information. For example, you can quickly check the camera mode, flash mode, number of exposures, exposure compensation, etc. with a glance at the LCD monitor. It also reports the time and amount of remaining battery power. Our only gripe about the information display is that so many of the camera settings are reported that the LCD screen seems a little crowded, which made it a little difficult for us to quickly center and line up an image. We would have liked to be able to cancel the information overlay somehow, either through the Record menu or a control button.
However, we did like the small histogram in the lower right corner, which plots a graphic representation of the subject's tonal range. The horizontal axis shows brightness, which increases from left to right, and the vertical axis shows the number of pixels at each brightness level. This is a great tool for determining if a subject is over- or underexposed. Keep in mind that the rightmost bar is pure white, meaning that any indication there means there are pixels in your image that are being blown out to pure white. (No highlight detail.) Histogram displays provide an excellent way to tell how the overall exposure of an image is doing, but are less useful for telling when a small area of the image has lost highlight detail. Still, a very useful feature, and one that we'd like to see on more digital cameras, from more manufacturers.
The LCD's more functional features in Playback mode include a nine image thumbnail display and a playback zoom function that allows you to get a close up view of areas within a captured image.
We found the PDR-M70's optical viewfinder to be a little tight (a change in our nomenclature, we previously referred to this behavior as "loose", showing only about 88 percent of the final image area at wide-angle and about 84 percent at telephoto. The LCD monitor a bit more accurate, showing 89 percent of the final image area at wide-angle and 91 percent at telephoto. To give you an idea of what we're looking for, we really prefer to see LCD monitors as close to 100 percent accuracy as possible. There is an argument to be made though, for having the LCD and optical viewfinders basically agree with other, which is that having consistent viewfinder coverage avoids confusion when switching between the two. We found the same accuracies at both the 2048 x 1536 and 1024 x 768 image sizes, with both viewfinders. Images framed with the optical viewfinder are shifted towards the lower right corner, while the LCD framing appears to be relatively square. We should note here that during our testing, we found it a little difficult to frame images in the LCD, because of the ever-present information display.
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