Sony DSC-S50Sony makes a compact 2.1 megapixel digicam with full movie/sound capability!<<Optics :(Previous) | (Next): Shutter Lag & Cycle Time Tests>> Page 6:Exposure & FlashReview First Posted: 4/12/2000 |
Exposure
We felt the S50 offered very good exposure control, although most
of the exposure settings rely on the LCD based menu system. (We prefer to see
common exposure options such as exposure compensation available more directly
via separate control buttons.) In addition to the Automatic exposure mode, the
S50 offers several special or advanced modes through the Program AE setting
in the Record menu. Aperture Priority allows you to set the lens aperture anywhere
from F/2.8 to F/11 in approximately 1/2 stop increments, while the camera sets
the appropriate shutter speed. Shutter Priority does the exact opposite and
lets you set the shutter speed from eight to 1/725 seconds for still images
and from 1/8 to 1/725 seconds for movies. Twilight mode helps you to capture
a bright subject in dark surroundings by suppressing the tendency to "wash out"
the subject's color. Twilight Plus does the same but takes it a little further.
Both modes are very useful for night scenes. Landscape and Panfocus modes we
mentioned earlier, with Landscape fixing focus at infinity and Panfocus allowing
for more rapid focus changes from infinity to shorter subject distances. Finally,
the Spot Metering mode tells the camera to take the exposure reading from the
very center of the frame, displaying target crosshairs on the LCD to assist
your composition.
Exposure compensation can be manually adjusted in any mode from -2 to +2 in
1/3 EV increments. White balance can also be controlled in all modes with settings
for Auto, Indoors, Outdoors and Hold (the manual setting). We enjoyed playing
with the Picture Effects menu, which allows you to get a little creative with
your images through settings like Solarize, Black & White, Sepia and Negative
Art. You can also adjust the image sharpness through the Record menu across
a range of arbitrary values from -2 to +2. (Minus 2 seems to correspond to no
sharpening at all, a good choice for images you'll be manipulating further in
an image editing program, applying sharpening only at the end of the process.)
Finally, a 10 second self-timer can be activated through the Record menu and
a small LED on the front of the camera counts down the seconds once the shutter
button has been fully pressed.
Flash
The built-in flash on the S50 has four settings: Auto, Red-Eye Reduction, Forced
and Suppressed. Auto lets the camera judge whether or not the flash is needed
by reading the existing light levels. Red-Eye Reduction fires a small pre-flash
to reduce the occurrence of the dreaded red-eye effect. Forced means that the
flash always fires, regardless of light level and Suppressed simply means that
the flash never fires. All modes are selected by pressing the Flash button sequentially
to cycle through the options. Flash power in the normal setting extends from
11.8 inches to 8.25 feet (0.3 to 2.5 m). You can adjust the flash intensity
through the Record menu to High, Normal or Low, which helps the flash adapt
to varying light levels or subject tonal balance.
Movie and Sound Recording
The S50 has both Still and Movie multimedia recording modes. In Still mode,
you can record small sound bytes to accompany images through the Record menu
(by selecting the Voice record mode). You can record up to 40 seconds of sound
for each image.
Under the Movie mode, you can record up to 60 seconds of moving images and sound.
Movie resolution can be either 160x112 or 320x240 pixels. Three standard menu
options let you select pre-programmed recording times of 5, 10, or 15 seconds.
In these modes, a single press of the shutter button will automatically record
a movie segment of the chosen length. A timer appears in the LCD monitor to
let you know how long you have been recording, so you'll have some idea of how
much time you have left to go. On the other hand, if you just hold down the
shutter button longer than the selected time, the camera will continue recording
for up to 60 seconds if you're using the lower-resolution movie mode, or 15
seconds at the higher-resolution setting. We noticed that while recording movies,
you can adjust the focus without interrupting recording, a nice feature missing
in some other movie-capable digicams. All of the other exposure settings are
available here as well with the exception of the flash. One minor complaint
about Movie recording on the S50: The good news is that the microphone is very
sensitive, able to pick up surprisingly faint sounds in the recording environment.
The bad news is that its so sensitive it picks up the very faint noises made
by the autofocus motor, when recording in very quiet surroundings. - Playing
back a sample movie, we heard a faint sound a bit like an old-time film-based
movie projector that we hadn't been aware of in the room when we recorded the
segment in question. Sure enough, holding the camera to our ear while recording
revealed a faint whisper from the autofocus motor! This probably won't be an
issue for most users, in typical environments. You might notice it when recording
something like a church service, or intermittent conversation in a quiet room
though...
Position Sensor
A handy feature of the S50 is its position sensor, which can be enabled or disabled
via a menu option. This option tells the camera when it's being used in a vertical
("portrait") orientation, and automatically rotates the image as its stored
to the memory card. This saves you having to rotate all those shots on the computer
after the fact. Since strong vibration could confuse the sensor, randomly rotating
images that should be, you can turn it off via an option on the File menu. (We
think this is a very useful feature, and would like to see it incorporated on
other digicams - Other manufacturers take note.)
Special Record Modes
The S50 gives you a few other options for the format of recorded images in Still
mode. Through the Record menu, you can select TIFF for uncompressed mode (available
only for the 1600 x 1200 image size), Voice (mentioned above), E-mail and Text
modes. E-mail record mode simply records a smaller (320 x 240) image size that's
more e-mail friendly in addition to the main image at the size selected through
the Record menu. Text record mode actually records a black and white GIF file
and is perfect for taking pictures of white boards, flip charts or notes from
a meeting, or for quickly copying a text document. (Text mode does require considerably
more time to record and display the images though, due to the greatly increased
processing the camera is doing to format the file.)
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