Sony DSC-S70Sony makes a compact 3.3 megapixel digicam with full movie/sound capability and a razor-sharp Zeiss lens!<<Optics :(Previous) | (Next): Shutter Lag & Cycle Time Tests>> Page 6:Exposure & FlashReview First Posted: 5/5/2000 |
Exposure
The S70 offers capable, straightforward exposure control, although most of the exposure settings rely on the LCD based menu system, a design that tends to increase power consumption. The camera defaults to Automatic exposure mode when it's powered on, but the also offers several other options (similar to the S50) through the Program AE button. Aperture Priority mode allows you to set the lens aperture anywhere from f/2.0 to f/8.0 while the camera sets the appropriate shutter speed. Alternatively, Shutter Priority mode lets you set the shutter speed from eight to 1/1000 seconds for still images and from 1/8 to 1/1000 seconds for movies while the camera controls the aperture. In both of these modes, if the camera disagrees with the chosen settings, the shutter and aperture values will flash in the LCD panel when the shutter button is pressed halfway. This gives you an opportunity to adjust the exposure without wasting a shot. Twilight mode allows you to capture a bright subject in dark surroundings (neon lights would be a good example), without washing out the color. Twilight Plus does the same but also allows the exposure system to select longer exposure times. As noted earlier, Landscape sets focus at infinity while Panfocus allows for swift focus changes from infinity to shorter distances. Finally, the Spot Metering mode tells the camera to take the exposure reading from the very center of the subject and a provides a target crosshair on the LCD to show where the exposure reading is being taken from.
Exposure compensation can be manually adjusted in any mode from -2 to +2 EV in 1/3 EV increments. (For those of us old-timers out there, an "EV unit" corresponds to a doubling or halving of exposure, equivalent to an f-stop in more familiar parlance.) White balance can also be controlled in all modes with settings for Auto, Indoors, Outdoors and Hold (the manual setting). As do a number of other Sony cameras, the S70 sports an Effects menu, providing a little in-camera creativity. Settings like Solarize, Black & White, Sepia and Negative Art can add a little interest to your images, although we personally turn to our computer for such things, rather than the camera itself.
The S70 also offers a menu selection for adjusting the in-camera image sharpening through a range of values ranging from -2 to +2 arbitrary units. The default value of zero is fine for most uses, but you might want to boost the sharpness a bit if your shots will be printed on a lower-quality inkjet printer. Alternatively, the lowest sharpness setting may be useful for images you plan to manipulate in Photoshop(tm) or other image editor, applying sharpening there, 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.
We did encounter one odd glitch with the self-timer function of our demo unit: There's an alert light that blinks to let you know the self-timer is counting down, and then illuminates continuously just as the picture is about to be taken. The problem was that the LED stayed on while the shutter was open! Since we frequently use the self-timer to shoot our low-light tests (to avoid camera shake), most of those images show a red glare from the alert LED! We let Sony know about this, but as we "went to press", we hadn't heard back as to whether this had been fixed in the production models. (It should be a fairly simple firmware change though, we'd imagine.)
(Reader Jeff Hong wrote to point out that this little "ready" light illuminates on *every* shot, whether the self-timer is used or not. The reflections we saw in our low-light shots will thus be a problem with any reflective object. Jeff said he just put a piece of black tape over the light on his camera to avoid the problem. - Thanks, Jeff!)
Flash
The built-in flash on the S70 has four settings: Auto, Red-Eye Reduction, Forced
and Suppressed. Auto puts the camera in charge of whether or not the flash fires
by reading the existing light levels. Red-Eye Reduction fires a small pre-flash
to reduce the occurrence of the Red-Eye Effect in portraits. Forced means that
the flash always fires, regardless of light level, and Suppressed simply means
that the flash never fires. All modes are controlled by pressing the Flash button
sequentially. Flash power in the normal setting extends from 11.62 inches to
8.25 feet (0.3 to 2.5 m). This rating agrees well with our own tests, which
showed the flash quite effective all the way out to 14 feet (the furthest we
can go in our studio), but with noticeable falloff beginning at about 9 feet.
You can adjust the flash intensity through the Record menu to High, Normal or
Low, which makes the flash more accommodating to varying light levels or different
subjects. We liked the fact that we could adjust exposure for the flash and
ambient lighting separately with the S70, a feature that makes it easier to
achieve balanced-looking exposures. (For our main "indoor portrait"
test shot, we ended up using the flash on its "low" setting, and boosting
the ambient exposure by +1.0 EV). The flash itself appears to be color-balanced
for daylight, which can result in slightly bluish highlights when used in conjunction
with strong incandescent ambient lighting. (The cure for this is to tape a piece
of orange-colored gel over the flash tube, and then use the incandescent white
balance setting. - An old pro's trick.)
Optional external
flash unit
An external flash sync socket is located on the side of the camera, next
to the digital and video jacks. Our test unit came with the optional Sony HVL-F1000
external flash, mounted on a bracket that attaches to the camera via the tripod
mount. With a pivoting head and a retractable diffuser, the external flash adds
even more flexibility to the S70. Something interesting we noticed is that the
power switch on the external flash is ineffective unless the flash is actually
connected to the camera (which must be powered on). This could save you the
pain of dead batteries in the flash, caused by leaving it turned on when not
in use. (We've done that more than once, ourselves!) On a side note, the external
flash and the built-in flash cannot be used together, so the benefit of the
external connection is simply to gain a more powerful flash that can also be
bounced off the ceiling or walls. With the diffuser screen in place over the
flash head, the HVL-F1000 does a pretty good job of covering the full view of
the camera with the optional ultra-wide angle lens attached. (We did find best
results in ultra-wide angle mode by bouncing the flash off the ceiling though.)
Movie and Sound Recording
The S70 has both Still and Movie 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
by holding down the shutter button. Pressing and releasing the shutter button
quickly lets you record for just five seconds.
Under the Movie mode, you can record up to 60 seconds of moving images with
sound (only 15 seconds at the 320HQ image size setting). A timer appears in
the LCD monitor to let you know how long you have been recording. We noticed
that while recording movies, you can adjust the focus without interrupting recording.
All of the other exposure settings are available here as well with the exception
of the flash. As with the voice recording capability, pressing the shutter button
momentarily records for five seconds, but this time can be set to 10 or 15 seconds
through the settings menu.
Special Record Modes
Like the S50, the S70 gives you a couple of recording format options for still
images. Through the Record menu, you can select TIFF for uncompressed mode,
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 same 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 meeting notes. As noted
below, quite a bit of processing is required to turn a maximum-resolution full-color
file to a 1-bit compressed GIF, taking the camera almost 40 seconds per image.
(Dropping to only 7 seconds for 640x480 images.) The results are quite impressive
though: Consider that a 2048x1536 image can cover an area of roughly 7.5 x 10
inches at a resolution of 200 pixels per inch. That's good enough for the resulting
image to be used for OCR (optical character recognition) purposes! (Over the
last couple of years, we've received a lot of email from readers wanting to
use their digicams as scanners, for just this purpose. With the DSC-S70, there's
finally a digicam ideally suited for it!)
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