Sony DSC-P1Sony packs a 3 megapixel CCD and a full 3x optical zoom lens into an exceptionally compact digicam!<<Reference: Datasheet :(Previous) | (Next): Print-Friendly Review Version>> DSC-P1 Sample ImagesReview First Posted: 9/12/2000 |
| We've begun including links in our reviews to a Thumber-generated index page for our test shots. The Thumber data includes a host of information on the images, including shutter speed, ISO setting, compression setting, etc. Rather than clutter the page below with *all* that detail, we're posting the Thumber index so only those interested in the information need wade through it! ;) |
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Outdoor portrait: (1315k) The extreme tonal range of this image makes it a tough shot for many digicams, which is precisely why we set it up this way. The object is to hold highlight and shadow detail without producing a "flat" picture with muddy colors and the DSC-P1's white balance system does a very nice job. We shot this image in the automatic (1355k)and daylight (1340k) white balance modes, selecting the daylight setting for our main series. The automatic setting produced similar results to daylight, though with just a trace of added warmth. Color balance looks vibrant and pretty accurate, and the P1 does a good job with the blue flowers and pants (these blues are very difficult for many digicams to reproduce correctly). There's just a bit too much magenta in these blues, but the P1 does better with them than the majority of cameras we've tested. Detail and resolution look very nice, although the images are just slightly soft relative to those we obtained with Sony's DSC-S70 (one of the sharpest cameras we've ever tested). We attribute this slight softness here to the fact that the camera uses a much smaller aperture in outdoor shots, particularly at telephoto lens settings (as here), apparently resulting in a small amount of diffraction-limiting in the optics under these conditions. Great detail in the shadow areas, with hardly any noise. Our main image was taken with only a +0.3 EV exposure adjustment to get the best exposure on the face without losing too much detail in the highlight areas. In this shot, the P1 clearly benefits from Sony's 12-bit digitization and image processing, which does an excellent job of holding detail in strong highlights, much more so than is typical in digicams we've tested.. Overall, a very impressive performance! The table below shows the results of a range of exposure settings from zero to +1.7 EV in the daylight white balance mode. Exposure Compensation Settings:
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Closer portrait: (1271k) The DSC-P1 also does a nice job on this closer, portrait shot, partly thanks to its 3x lens. (Shorter focal length lenses tend to distort facial features in close-up shots like this and the availability of longer focal lengths is a key feature if you're going to be shooting close-up people shots). We again shot with the daylight white balance setting, our main shot requiring no exposure adjustment. (We generally find that this closer portrait. In terms of resolution and detail, the image looks nice and crisp, particularly in the strands of the model's hair. (Although still somewhat below the level of sharpness we saw in the DSC-S70.) Noise remains very low in the shadow areas, and what noise is present is of a very fine grain. The table below shows the results of a range of exposure settings from zero to +1.3 EV. Exposure Compensation Settings:
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Indoor Portrait, Flash: (1210k) The DSC-P1's built-in flash does a reasonably good job of illuminating the subject, although the strong incandescent ambient lighting results a slightly warm, orange-ish color cast. For our first series of shots, we simply fired the flash in the high (1200k), normal (1210k) and low (1227k) intensity settings, using automatic white balance. As we mentioned, color balance is slightly orange, particularly in the background areas. However, color balance on the model and the flowers looks pretty good, and not too washed out at the normal intensity setting. The high intensity setting flattens the colors a little and washes out the subject, while the low intensity setting definitely increases the warm, orange cast. Next, we shot with the camera's Twilight Plus mode, again in automatic white balance, and changed the flash intensity from high (1284k), to normal (1292k), to low (1275k). The Twilight Plus mode does a good job of letting in more ambient light, although the warm cast appears slightly increased, as do bluish tints in some of the shadow areas. We noticed the same general results as above at each of the intensity settings, this time with the high setting producing the most accurate results in the series. Because the Twilight Plus mode slightly intensifies the orange cast (although it does lighten the image quite a bit), we stuck with the regular exposure mode and the normal flash setting for our main shot. |
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Indoor portrait, no flash: (1261k) This shot is always a very tough test of a camera's white balance capability, given the strong, yellowish color cast of the household incandescent bulbs used for the lighting, and the DSC-P1's white balance system had a little bit of trouble. We tested the automatic (60k) and incandescent (57k) (or Indoors, as Sony calls it) white balance settings, choosing automatic for our main series. Both white balance settings produced interesting color casts. Automatic resulted in a fairly warm cast, as did the incandescent setting. Staying in the automatic setting, we also shot with the camera's Twilight Plus (1251k) mode, which turned the warm cast into a rather magenta one. For our main shot,(1261k) we chose a +1.0 EV adjustment in automatic white balance mode. Aside from the warm cast, color balance looks slightly muted, particularly in the blue flowers, which appear a little dark. We did find though, that the images "cleaned up" very well in Photoshop(tm), using just a simple auto levels adjustment, as seen here.(536k) The table below shows a range of exposure adjustments from zero to +1.7 EV using the automatic white balance setting in both normal and Twilight Plus exposure modes. Exposure Compensation Settings, Normal Mode:
Exposure Compensation Settings, Twilight Mode:
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House shot: (1428k) NOTE that this is the "new" house shot, a much higher-resolution poster than we first used in our tests. To compare the image of the DSC-P1 with previously tested cameras, here's a shot of the original house poster in the automatic (1416k) white balance setting. We shot this image with the automatic (583k) and daylight (59k) white balance settings, ultimately deciding on the automatic setting for our main series. The daylight setting wasn't too far off the mark though, producing slightly warmer results than automatic. The image appears reasonably crisp in this shot, with just a touch of softness (again comparing to the exceptional DSC-S70. Still, a very nice amount of detail is visible throughout the image, particularly in the shrubbery and tree limbs. The roof shingles show only a very moderate level of noise, and the in-camera sharpening is barely noticeable at all (we just picked up a pixel or two of the halo effect around the light and dark edges of the white trim along the roof line). A very good job overall. The table below shows the full range of resolution and quality settings for the DSC-P1 in the automatic white balance mode.
Sharpness Series We also tested the DSC-P1's sharpness adjustments, which adjust the sharpness in values from -2 to +2 with zero being the normal sharpness level. The incremental adjustment does a nice job of softening and sharpening the image, without altering the contrast or being too heavy-handed. Users interested in doing substantial post-capture modification in Photoshop or other image-manipulation program will likely want to use one of the "softer" settings, sharpening the final image in software, rather than relying on the camera's own sharpening algorithms. - See the sample below shot using the -2 sharpness setting and then later sharpened strongly in Photoshop using the Unsharp Masking filter.
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Far-Field Test (1418k) This image is shot at infinity to test far-field lens performance. NOTE that this image cannot be directly compared to the other "house" shot, which is a poster, shot in the studio. The rendering of detail in the poster will be very different than in this shot, and color values (and even the presence or absence of leaves on the trees!) will vary in this subject as the seasons progress. In general though, you can evaluate detail in the bricks, shingles and window detail, and in the tree branches against the sky. Compression artifacts are most likely to show in the trim along the edge of the roof, in the bricks, or in the relatively "flat" areas in the windows. We shot this test with the automatic white balance mode, because it offered the best color balance. This is the strongest test of detail of any that we do, since the bright white of the central bay window often tricks digicams into losing detail in the highlight areas. The DSC-P1 does a good job in this area, particularly in the details of the foliage against the sky. Excellent resolution and detail throughout, with just a hint of softness in the shrubbery. Color balance also looks great, and the roof shingles show a minimal amount of fine grain noise. This shot is somewhat variable, due to atmospheric conditions and sun angle. This shot was taken in late summer/early fall, with the sun hitting the front of the house quite strongly. Thus, even the P1's excellent highlight-handling capability was severely challenged by the strong highlight on the front bay window of the house. The table below shows the full resolution and quality series in the automatic white balance setting.
Sharpness Series We again shot with the variable sharpness adjustments, which produced great results. The highest sharpness setting did a good job of bringing out slightly more detail in the bright bay window area.
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Lens Zoom Range We've received a number of requests from readers to take shots showing the lens focal length range of those cameras with zoom lenses. Thus, we're happy to present you here with the following series of shots, showing the field of view with the lens at full wide angle, the lens at full 3x telephoto and the lens at full telephoto with 2x digital telephoto enabled. At full wide angle, the DSC-P1 produces a nice wide shot, with just a hint of barrel distortion visible along the curb of the road. The 3x telephoto setting does a great job of zooming in and increasing sharpness slightly. We were impressed with Sony's 2x Precision Digital Zoom, which "zooms" in much closer to the subject and manages to maintain a good level of image quality. Most digital telephoto functions simply enlarge the center of the CCD image, thereby losing resolution and increasing noise. Sony's Precision Digital Zoom supposedly uses a proprietary interpolation process to better retain resolution, and actually appears to do a surprisingly nice job of it. (Do note though, that these images were shot at the camera's 1280x960 resolution mode, so some of the apparent "zoom" effect is just the result of the smaller image size. Still, this does seem to be a better digital telephoto result than we're accustomed to seeing.
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Musicians Poster (1409k) We shot this test with the automatic (559k) and daylight (548k) white balance settings, choosing daylight as the most accurate overall. The automatic setting produced just slightly warm results, noticeable in the skin tones and the white flowers of the Oriental model's hair. This image is often a tough test of a camera's white balance system, in that the significant amount of blue in the image often tricks digicams (as it did to a slight extent in the automatic white balance shots taken with the P1). Color balance looks pretty accurate throughout, and the blue of the model's robe looks about right (a hard blue for many digicams to reproduce). The skin tones also look very good. The images appear relatively sharp, with a fair amount of detail showing in the bird wings and silver threads on the blue robe, as well as in the flower garland of the blonde model's hair. Noise remains minimal and fine-grained throughout the image, although some of it could be coming from the poster. Below is our standard resolution and quality series in the automatic white balance setting. Resolution/Quality series
Sharpness Series We also shot a series with the camera's sharpness adjustments, which again did a very nice job. We noticed that on the sharpest setting, the noise pattern becomes a little more defined.
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Macro Shot (1403k) The DSC-P1 performs about average in the macro category, capturing a minimum area of 4.21 x 3.16 inches (106.89 x 80.17 mm). (Like many digicams with zoom lenses, the P1's best macro performance is with the lens at its wide angle setting, but this makes for a rather close working distance (4 inches, about 10 cm) for the magnification produced. Color balance looks very good, as do detail and resolution (we noticed just a hint of softness throughout the image). The brooch appears just slightly softer, but this could be due to a limited depth of field. The DSC-P1's built-in flash (1433k) does a reasonably good job of throttling down for the macro area, showing slightly more shadow on the left side of the image, a result of the fairly short working distance of only 4 inches. |
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"Davebox" Test Target (1214k) Really an excellent performance! We shot this test target with the automatic white balance setting, again because of its more accurate white value. Color balance is excellent overall. The large cyan, magenta and yellow color blocks appear nearly accurate and bright, although maybe just the slightest bit undersaturated in the cyan. The DSC-P1 picks up the difference between the red and magenta color blocks on the middle, horizontal color chart, a problem area where many digicams try to blend the two colors. The subtle tonal variations of the Q60 chart are visible up to the "B" range, which is another difficult area for digicams. The P1 resolves almost the entire vertical grayscale, reaching all the way down to the next to the last step at the shadow end, with almost no noise at all. Great detail in the shadow area of the briquettes as well, again with a minimal noise level. Likewise, the sometimes difficult highlight details of the white gauze are also visible. Really excellent results overall! Below is our standard resolution and quality series. Resolution/Quality series
Sharpness Series The DSC-P1's sharpness adjustments again yielded nice results, without altering the image contrast or brightness.
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Low-Light Tests The DSC-P1 doesn't do quite as well in the low light category as the very best of the current crop of 3 megapixel digicams, as we were only able to obtain useable images at light levels as low as 1/2 of a foot-candle (5.5 lux). Overall, we'd rate the camera as performing at full spec at 2 foot-candles (22 lux), adequately at 1 foot-candle (11 lux), and marginally at 1/2 foot-candle (5.5 lux). Noise is quite low throughout the range. (For reference, a typical city night scene under average street lighting corresponds to a light level of about 1 foot-candle.) The table below shows the best exposure we were able to obtain for each of a range of illumination levels, all shot in the camera's Twilight Plus exposure mode. Images in this table (like all our sample photos) are untouched, exactly as they came from the camera. Prior to the P1, we haven't been recording the minimum light level that cameras' autofocus systems could work at, but will now do so on a regular basis. In the case of the P1, we found that it focused well to 1 foot-candle, was a little spotty at 1/2 foot-candle, and below that really needed to be operated in a fixed-focus (landscape or panfocus) mode.
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Flash Range Test (New) (This test was added in August 1999, so cameras tested before that time won't have comparison pictures available. As we go forward though, all the new models will have similar tests available). Sony estimates the DSC-P1's flash range as effective from 1.6 to 7.5 feet (0.5 to 2.3 m) in the normal intensity setting and in the wide angle mode. With the lens at the telephoto setting, the official flash range is only claimed to be 3.9 feet (1.2 meters). This estimation seemed pretty consistent with our findings, as we got the brightest image at the eight foot mark. (The shortest flash range we test.) As we backed further and further away from the target, the images became noticeably darker with each foot of distance. Below is our flash range series, with distances from eight to 14 feet from the target. This very limited flash range is the biggest negative we found against the P1, an unfortunate shortcoming in a camera with such strong capabilities in essentially every other area.
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ISO-12233 (WG-18) Resolution Test (1317k) The DSC-P1 turned in a really excellent performance on the resolution test. In fact, it actually almost exactly equaled the performance of the earlier DSC-S70, a notably sharp, high-resolution camera. The image is a little softer overall, but the detail resolved (in terms of lines per picture height) is virtually identical. (A nice illustration of the difference between resolution and sharpness.) We "called" the P1's resolution at 900-950 lines per picture height in the horizontal direction, and 850-900 in the vertical, with detail visible vertically well beyond 900 lines, and horizontally to well beyond 1000. As with S70 seems to show resolution beyond what should be theoretically possible, according to the Nyquist theorem and the CCD's pixel count. We attributed this to the camera's excellent suppression of artifacts, both in chrominance (color) and luminance (brightness) domains. There is in fact some aliasing visible beginning around 750 lines vertically (where theory says the limit should be), but it's so well controlled as to be almost invisible. Really a topnotch performance on this test! Resolution/Quality series, Wide Angle
Sharpness Series, Wide Angle
Resolution/Quality series, Telephoto
Sharpness Series, Telephoto
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Viewfinder Accuracy/Flash Uniformity We found the DSC-P1's optical viewfinder to be rather tight, showing about 84 percent of the final image area at wide angle (1215k) and 83 percent at telephoto (1284k) (at both 2048 x 1536 and 640 x 480 image sizes). The LCD monitor was more accurate, though still a little tight, showing 90 percent of the final image area at both wide angle (1208k) and telephoto (1292k) (also at both 2048 x 1536 and 640 x 480 image sizes). Since we generally like to see LCD monitors as close to 100 percent accuracy as possible, we felt the DSC-P1's LCD fell a little short in this area. (On the other hand, there's an argument to be made for having the optical and LCD viewfinders agree with each other as closely as possible, and the P1 does well by that measure. For our part though, we'll take 100% on the LCD viewfinder every time...) We also noticed that images framed with the optical viewfinder tended to be pushed up and to the left of the image area, with more space on the right and bottom sides. These images also showed a slight slant towards the lower right corner. Optical distortion on the DSC-P1 is a little high on the wide angle end, as we noticed a 0.9 percent barrel distortion. Pincushion distortion on the telephoto end was barely noticeable at all though, as we picked up only about one pixel's worth. Chromatic aberration is also very low, showing about two to three pixels of coloration on each side of the black target lines. (This distortion is visible as a very slight colored fringe around the objects at the edges of the field of view on the resolution target.) We did notice some "coma" in the corners of the image at wide angle, visible as a lighter fringe on the inner edge of test elements in the resolution target's corners. There's also a little light falloff in the corners of the resolution target at wide angle that is clearly due to the lens. Flash illumination appears rather dim at the telephoto setting, but is much brighter at wide angle. Flash uniformity is excellent at telephoto, but the wide angle shows some falloff at the edges, particularly in the corners. (A fairly typical behavior among digicams we've tested.) |
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