Toshiba PDR-5 Test Images
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Outdoor portrait: (103k)
The outdoor portrait shot from the PDR-5 shows good color saturation
and detail, and good tonality from highlight to shadow. Resolution was good,
although the red channel tended to pixelize a bit more than the others.
(For what it's worth, this increased pixelation in the red channel appears
to be rather characteristic of many VGA-level digital cameras.) |
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Closer portrait: (94k)
The close-in portrait shows surprisingly good detail for a VGA-resolution
camera, although the slightly wide-angle lens distorts the models features
somewhat. (No strike against the PDR-5, as most digital cameras with fixed
focal-length lenses will do the same.) |
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Indoor portrait, flash:
(79k) There was some interaction between the flash
and the exposure-adjustment settings on the PDR-5, allowing EV adjustments
to have some impact on flash exposures. We found we got the best exposures
with about a half EV-value of increased exposure (which is how the image
above was shot.) The effect of the flash is subtle, and blends well with
the background incandescent illumination, with no abnormal color casts. |
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Indoor portrait, no
flash: (79k) The indoor portrait taken without
flash by the PDR-5 showed average to slightly better-than-average detail
for a VGA camera. Our main shot here was taken with the white
balance set to "incandescent," (79k) which
largely neutralized the strong yellowish cast of the room lighting. This
shot was taken with the white balance set to "auto,"
(82k) which left most of the color cast in the image.
Our main shot was taken with the default camera autoexposure setting. In
this shot, the exposure compensation was adjusted
upward two steps (79k), demonstrating that the
camera can find more than enough light in well-lit indoor scenes to produce
bright, open available-light exposures. |
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House shot: (79k)
The shot of the house poster shows good detail for a VGA-level device,
with relatively few JPEG artifacts, and well-balanced color, tending slightly
toward a cooler cast. Overall color is very slightly under-saturated, but
not dramatically so. Exposure balance is very good, with good detail held
both in the mulch around the plantings in the garden (a frequent problem
area), as well as in the shadows to the right of the house. This shot, taken
in black and white mode (76k),
shows somewhat finer detail, and more subtle textures than the color version,
although the effect is very slight. "Standard"
resolution mode (41k) holds detail, but with considerably
more JPEG artifacts. |
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Far-Field shot: (80k) This is one of our newer test standards. It 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 windows, 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. This shot shows the lens to be a bit soft at "infinity," although
overall detail is very good. Overall exposure is good too, although a
tendency to blow-out very strong highlights is apparent in the white of
the house, and the sky seen through the trees. (Although, in truth, there
wasn't a lot to see in the sky when this shot was taken, as the background
was mostly flat gray-white clouds.) |
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"Musicians" poster:
(79k) Overall, the PDR-5 did very well with this shot,
producing well-balanced contrast and exposure, handling the subtle gradations
of the model's faces quite well. This target also served as a good example
of the different color responses to be found with different white balance
settings. The main shot was taken with the white
balance set to "daylight," (79k) while
this one was taken with the "automatic"
white balance setting (78k). We found that the
PDR-5's auto white balance generally produced somewhat lower color saturation
and cooler tones than the lighting-specific settings. The main difference
in the "Standard" resolution image
(40k) is again increased JPEG artifacts, with color
and tone being about the same. |
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Macro shot: (77k)
The PDR-5 test is one of the first to use our improved macro target, which
now includes a dollar bill to show finer detail. The PDR-5's macro setting
did quite well, capturing a minimum area of 3 x 4 inches (7.7 x 10.2 cm)
at closest approach. We also shot this image with the camera in black & white mode (74k). Again, the
effect was very subtle, but some increase in detail can be seen in the fine
engraving. This final shot shows the results of the "standard"
resolution setting (40k). |
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"Davebox" test target:
(79k) The main shot here was taken with the camera in "fine"
mode, while this one was taken in "standard"
mode (38k). A close analysis of this image showed
the reason for the PDR-5's slightly undersaturated colors. We were impressed
with how well the camera did at capturing the full tonal range, neither
blowing out the highlights nor plugging the shadows (except for portions
of the charcoal bricks that were simply too dark to register at all). When
we saw how wide a tonal range the camera was capturing, we had an immediate
"aha!" realization that the slightly flat colors were simply a
result of the camera's care to not lose any detail in the tonal extremes.
Sure enough, two quick moves (highlight and shadow sliders) in Photoshop's
"levels" control produced bright, saturated colors. Readers with
less-sophisticated image manipulation programs can achieve the same result
by simply boosting the image contrast slightly. Doing so changes the
PDR-5's color from "average" to exceptional! |
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"WG-18" resolution target:
(74k) (Technoids only)
We called the visual resolution as ~350-375 line pairs/picture height in
both horizontal and vertical directions, with virtually no aliasing. Image
in "Standard" resolution (40k) is also 640x480,
only with higher JPEG compression. Compression artifacts are relatively
minor in "fine" mode, fairly pronounced in "standard"
mode. As in other test shots, the resolution target shot in black
& white mode (72k) showed fairly subtle improvements in detail: Absolute resolution
didn't increase, but the level of JPEG artifacts declined slightly from
that in "Fine" mode. |
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Viewfinder accuracy/flash uniformity target: Both
optical and LCD viewfinder
tests show well-centered images, and a view that encompasses 92% of the
area actually captured by the CMOS sensor. The lens also exhibits almost
no barrel distortion, a common problem on wide-angle lenses in low-end digital
cameras. Flash uniformity is fairly good, although the corners fall off
slightly, with strongest illumination in a cross-shaped pattern. |
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