Toshiba PDR-M70Toshiba brings true photographic features to their new 3 flagship model!<<Optics :(Previous) | (Next): Shutter Lag & Cycle Time Tests>> Page 6:Exposure & FlashReview First Posted: 8/17/2000 |
Exposure
We experienced very good exposure control on the PDR-M70, and found its LCD based menu system, as well as the control layout, straightforward and uncomplicated. In addition to a fully automatic mode, the PDR-M70 also offers Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority exposure modes, which allow you to control either the aperture or shutter speed while the camera controls the other variable. You can adjust the aperture from f/2.0 to f/8.0 and the shutter speed from eight to 1/1,000 seconds.
On higher-end digicams, we always also look for full-manual exposure modes, in which you can control both aperture and shutter speed independently. Initially, we thought we'd be disappointed by the M70 in this respect, but it turns out the engineers built in a "hidden" manual mode, as detailed on the same Toshiba FAQ web page for the camera as held the manual-focus information mentioned earlier. Here's the somewhat torturous procedure for entering manual exposure mode: (Note that the camera exits full-manual mode as soon as you rotate the mode dial away from the Av position, or turn it off.):
Procedure - Full Shutter and Aperture Control
- 1. Turn on the camera.
- 2. Turn the Mode Dial to Set Up mode.
- 3. Press and hold the MENU Button.
- 4. While holding the MENU Button, turn the Model Dial to the AV Mode.
- 5. Release the MENU Button.
If this procedure was successful, you'll see a yellow " M " in the
top left corner of the display on the rear of the camera. Once in this mode,
you can use the arrows on the rear-panel rocker toggle control to manually adjust
both the shutter speed and aperture settings. A very nice touch here is that
the readout area on the LCD screen that's normally reserved for exposure-compensation
display now shows the amount over- or underexposed that the camera thinks your
chosen aperture and shutter settings will leave the final picture. Very handy!
(But why, oh why, did Toshiba bury this exceptionally useful function so deeply
in their user interface, and completely neglected to put any mention of it in
their user manual?)
An interesting feature on the PDR-M70 is that while shooting in Automatic exposure
mode, you can select between a range of preset camera settings: Portrait, Landscape,
Fast-moving Subjects, Night and Multi-Shot. The Portrait setting adjusts the
aperture so that the background is blurred and the subject is the main focus.
The Landscape setting adjusts the camera for distant scenes and landscapes,
presumably by adjusting the focus for infinity. Under Fast-moving Subjects,
the camera increases the shutter speed so that you can capture fast paced action
such as sporting events. (Based on our tests, it appears that this mode both
selects a wider lens aperture, as well as slightly boosts the CCD's ISO rating.)
As you might expect, the Night setting allows you to photograph people against
dark backgrounds, such as city scapes, without losing any of the background's
details. The Night mode works well with the Slow-Synchro flash mode. Finally,
the Multi-Shot mode actually takes 36 small images continuously at 0.07 second
intervals, which are saved as one 2048 x 1536 image, best used with moving subjects
as a sort of timeline.
Exposure compensation (EV) on the PDR-M70 can be adjusted from -1.5 to +1.5
EV, in 1/3 EV increments, by pressing the left and right arrow buttons of the
rocker toggle key in any capture mode. White balance is adjustable through the
Record menu and can be set to Automatic, Outdoors, Cloudy, Bluish Fluorescent,
Reddish Fluorescent and Incandescent to match a variety of light sources. You
also have an ISO adjustment, with the options of setting the camera's sensitivity
to Normal (ISO 100), 2x (ISO 200 or 4x (ISO 400). Through the record menu, you
can adjust the image sharpness as well as the contrast. A self-timer function
allows you to set up a shot and then fire a delayed shutter, with either a 10
or two second countdown. A fun feature on the PDR-M70 is the Color menu, which
allows you to choose between Standard color, Vivid color, Monochrome and Sepia
tones. (We like the inclusion of both normal and "vivid" color settings
on digicams, but felt that the Vivid setting on the PDR-M70 was so subtle as
to be almost unnoticeable. We encourage the digicam manufacturers to pursue
this sort of option more though, even to the point of providing multiple saturation
settings from which users can choose.) You also have the freedom to change the
AE/AF Lock Area. Through the on-screen menu in Shutter and Aperture Priority
modes, you can set the AE/AF Lock area to top, bottom, center, right or left,
giving you a little more flexibility when composing images.
An optional quick image preview appears after firing the shutter, allowing you
to delete an image if you aren't satisfied with it. This saves a little time,
as you don't have to switch over to Playback mode to check your image. (Note
that a handy feature of the PDR-M70 is that you can delete the last image shot
at any time, by pressing the Erase button.)
As we mentioned earlier, the PDR-M70 displays a small histogram in the lower
right corner of the LCD screen, which plots the tonal values of the image. This
is a great tool for checking whether an image is over or underexposed, in that
you can check the distribution of white, black and mid-tone values throughout
the image. If too much of the graph is "piled up" on the right side
of the display, then many of the lighter tones will be forced to white and appear
blown out. Likewise, a large peak on the extreme left hand side of the graph
indicates that darker tones being forced to black. We generally really like
histogram functions for precise exposure control, but did find that on the PDR-M70
a little tricky to use during our testing. The problem was that the rather small
display area meant that you could only see the effect of fairly large regions
of the image being forced to white: Levels that we thought should be okay often
resulted in images with washed-out highlights. In hindsight, it would be very
helpful if the histogram display could be modified to alert you in some way
whenever detail was being lost in highlights. (Maybe an expanded-scale red bar
on the right-hand side of the display, that would respond with greater sensitivity
to pure white pixels?)
Flash
The PDR-M70's built-in flash is controlled by the Flash button on top
of the camera and operates in six modes: Automatic, Redeye Reduction Auto,
Redeye Reduction Forced, Forced, Suppressed and Slow Synchro. Most of
the flash modes are pretty self explanatory. Automatic fires the flash
depending on the light level. Redeye Reduction Auto and Forced both fire
a small pre-flash before firing the full flash to reduce the Redeye Effect.
However, the Auto setting lets the camera judge when the flash is needed
and the Forced setting simply fires the Redeye flash with every exposure.
The standard Forced flash mode fires the flash with the shutter, no matter
what the light levels are. Likewise, Suppressed prevents the flash from
firing at all. Finally, Slow Synchro fires the flash in conjunction with
a slower shutter speed for night scenes. Note that when shooting in Aperture
or Shutter Priority modes, the Forced, Suppressed and Redeye Reduction
Forced modes are the only ones available. (The Auto and Slow Syncro modes
are only available when the camera is in full-automatic exposure mode.)
Toshiba reports the PDR-M70's flash range as effective from 2.6 to 13
feet (0.8 to 4.0 m) in the wide angle setting. In our testing, we found
the PDR-M70's flash to be reasonably effective all the way out to 14 feet.
A slight magenta cast appears at eight feet and slowly increases with
the distance, so that by the 14 foot mark, the color cast is fairly pronounced.
The table below shows results obtained at a range of distances from eight
to 14 feet. Toshiba also included an external flash sync connection, for
connecting a more powerful external strobe unit. If an external flash
is connected, the flash setting must be changed in the Record menu to
External in order for the accessory flash unit to fire. Note that the
camera's internal flash will not fire when using an external flash.
Continuous Shooting
In
this mode, the camera fires the shutter at approximately 0.8 second intervals,
as long as the shutter button is held down, with a maximum speed of five
images in four seconds. Up to eight images can be taken continuously,
or as many as the buffer memory will hold. While the shutter button is
held down, images are saved to a temporary buffer memory before being
saved to the SmartMedia card. Toshiba's implementation of the post-exposure
image-selection function is one of the best we've seen, making the Continuous
mode more useful than it might be otherwise. After releasing the shutter
button, you will be asked to verify your images. This allows you to discard
images you don't want, and thereby save a little SmartMedia space. The
maximum number of images captured per burst also depends on the amount
of SmartMedia card space and the size of the image. This mode is not available
when shooting with the Night and Multi-Shot settings in the Automatic
exposure mode.
Auto Exposure Bracketing
The PDR-M70 also offers the convenience of an Auto Exposure Bracketing function, available only in the Aperture and Shutter Priority exposure modes. Once activated (by pressing the Mode button three times), the bracketing function takes three images when you press the shutter button, snapping images at -0.3, 0.0 and +0.3 EV exposure compensation values. All three images are saved to the SmartMedia card without individual review. (You can of course view them and delete the ones you don't like after the fact, in playback mode.)
Movie Mode
Movie mode on the PDR-M70 is accessed simply by turning the mode dial to the movie camera symbol. The amount of available recording time will display on the LCD monitor, and depends on the battery power and available SmartMedia space. To record, you simply press the shutter button once and then press it again to stop recording. Movies are recorded with sound and saved as AVI files. Available image sizes are 320 x 240 and 160 x 120, and the image is displayed in the center of the LCD monitor, not enlarged to full screen, to increase clarity. Unlike some digicams with multimedia modes, the PDR-M70 lets you zoom the lens during movie recording, and the autoexposure function continues to operate while "filming." (Note though, that zoom lens actuation during recording does produce some motor noise on the audio track.)
Audio Mode
This mode allows you to record audio only, as notes or reminders. After accessing the mode by turning the mode dial to the microphone symbol, the amount of available recording time is displayed in the LCD monitor. As with recording movies, pressing the shutter button once begins recording, and pressing it a second time ends the recording.
The PDR-M70's audio-recording mode deserves some special mention, as it is quite a bit more extensive that what we're accustomed to seeing on digicams. You're provided with a fairly complete control panel on the LCD display, and audio clips are stored and recalled separately from still images: An index of stored audio clips, complete with information on date, time, and duration is available whenever you hit the "enter" button (center of the rocker toggle control) in Audio mode. Unlike many digicams, audio recording duration is limited only by the amount of SmartMedia space that's available: The provided 16 megabyte memory card allows up to an hour of audio to be recorded. An added bonus is the ability to turn off the LCD while recording, to extend battery life. (We estimate that a fully charged battery should last for about two hours of recording time with the LCD on, and perhaps 3.5 hours with it off.) This all combines to make the PDR-M70 into a useful audio note-taking device, albeit with a few limitations. We did find that the internal microphone isn't terribly sensitive relative to the needs of recording conversations in a large room. Also, the sound quality seemed fairly low overall, although this could have been the result of the tiny speaker in the camera: We didn't try listening to the recorded sounds through a separate amplifier and speakers. Of course, the point of a portable recording device isn't to deliver symphony-quality sound, but rather to simply capture verbal notes and conversations. The PDR-M70 seems fairly well suited for such uses.
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