Sony DSC-S85Sony extends its S-series Cybershot line with the S85, sporting a 4-megapixel CCD, Exposure Bracketing, and Burst 3 sequential capture.<<Video, Power, Software :(Previous) | (Next): Reference: Datasheet>> Page 12:Test Results & ConclusionReview First Posted: 6/7/2001 |
Test Results
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As with all Imaging Resource product tests, we encourage you to let your own eyes be the judge of how well the camera performed. Explore the images on the pictures page, to see how the DSC- S85 performed, and how its images compare to other cameras you may be considering.
Overall, the S85 produced really excellent images. Color was quite good, with appropriately saturated primary colors, as well as good handling of pastels. Overall color accuracy was very high, and color saturation in the difficult subtractive primaries (cyan, magenta, yellow) appeared slightly better than on the earlier S75. Tonal range was also excellent, particularly in the shadow details. At the other end of the scale, the S85 managed to preserve highlight detail in many shooting situations where lesser cameras produced blown-out, pure white images. The S85's white balance system did a good job with most of our light sources, and the manual white balance option seemed slightly more accurate than that of the previous S75. Perhaps most interesting on the white balance front was how well the S85's automatic white balance setting did with our difficult indoor portrait shot, taken under household incandescent lighting. The S85's auto white balance option produced a very nicely balanced image here, with just about the right amount of warmth left in the final image to suggest the mood of the incandescent lighting. Very few cameras can handle the strong yellow cast of household incandescent bulbs, so it's a big plus that the S85 can do so without having to abandon its automatic setting. (Interestingly, the automatic setting did better than the incandescent one.)
The S85 continues the Sony tradition of using high-quality Carl Zeiss lenses, a name long associated with exceptionally sharp images. We're happy to report that the S85 maintained the same level of sharpness we admired so much with the S70 and S75, producing consistently sharp images with each of our test shots. We did find some geometric distortion (very common among zoom-equipped digicams we've tested), with a barrel distortion of 0.73 percent in wide-angle mode, but virtually no pincushion distortion in telephoto mode. These distortion figures are actually a bit better than average, particularly at the telephoto end of the lens range. (The barrel distortion at wide angle is just slightly worse than we measured for the S75, but the pincushion distortion is somewhat less. - We're a little puzzled by these results, as this is the same lens design as used on the S75.) Chromatic aberration is present but very low, we caught only one or two pixels of coloration on each side of the corner elements in our resolution target, when photographed at the wide-angle setting. (This distortion is visible as a very slight color fringe around objects at the edges of the field of view on the resolution target.) At the telephoto end of the lens range, the chromatic aberration is much less apparent.
Given the S85's 4.1 megapixel sensor and sharp "Carl Zeiss" lens, it's perhaps no surprise that it does very well on our laboratory resolution target test. We observed the first (very faint) hints of artifacts appearing at around 900 lines per picture height, in both the horizontal and vertical directions. Strong detail was clearly visible to 1100 lines though, and "extinction" didn't occur until somewhere around 1500 lines. The image is also razor-sharp all the way out to the corners. Overall an excellent performance!
The photo above shows how the S85's resolution compares to that of the S75 introduced just a few months ago. The S75 is about the sharpest 3.3 megapixel camera we've tested, but the S85 easily bests it in the resolution department. Very impressive!
The S85 follows the current standard in its provision of both optical and LCD viewfinders. The S85's optical viewfinder is a little tight, showing approximately 83.6 percent frame accuracy at wide angle, and about 83.2 percent at telephoto. By contrast, the LCD monitor showed almost exactly 100% of the final image area. We couldn't measure the frame coverage exactly, as our shots placed the standard lines of measurement outside of the final frame at both wide angle and telephoto settings. A little time with the pixel-counting tools in Photoshop(tm) though, convinced us that it was actually just minor framing errors on our part that prevented us from seeing the lines: The S85's viewfinder shows exactly 100% of the final image area.
The S85 also performed very well in the macro category, capturing a minimum area of just 2.46 x 1.84 inches (62.47 x 46.85 millimeters). Resolution was high, with good detail visible throughout the image. Details were also fairly sharp, though the brooch was a little soft, probably due to the limited depth of field when working that close. Corner softness was more noticeable in this shot, at all four corners of the image, and we also noticed some barrel distortion from the lens' wide angle setting. The S85's built-in flash had some trouble throttling down for the macro area, overexposing the subject and washing out color. The lens blocks the flash as well, causing a dark shadow in the bottom right corner of the image.
The S85 performed very well in the low-light category, capturing bright, usable images at light levels as low as 1/16 foot-candle (0.67 lux) at the 200 and 400 ISO settings. At the 100 ISO setting, the target was still fairly bright at the 1/16 foot-candle light level, though we felt the camera captured a more usable image at the 1/8 foot-candle (1.3 lux) light level. We also noticed a change in color cast from the 1/4 foot-candle (2.7 lux) light level to the 1/8 foot-candle (1.3 lux) light level, going from a warm cast to a cooler one. Noise was moderately high at the 100 ISO setting, and increased with the 200 and 400 ISO settings. (We direct readers to Mike Chaney's excellent Qimage Pro program, for a tool with an amazing ability to remove image noise without significantly affecting detail.) Overall noise in the low light tests was quite a bit higher than we saw in the 3.1 megapixel S75, but at this point, it's hard to say whether this was due to smaller pixels in the CCD, or simply to prototype-level electronics. - We'll have to wait for the production model to draw any firm conclusions in this area.) To put the S85's low-light performance in perspective, an average city night scene under modern street lighting corresponds to a light level of about one foot-candle, so the camera should easily handle much darker situations without the flash. The table below shows the best exposure we were able to obtain for each of a range of illumination levels, at all three ISO settings. Images in this table (like all of our sample photos) are untouched, exactly as they came from the camera.
Overall, we were very impressed with the S85's performance. Building on the already good performance of the S70 and S75, the DSC-S85 increased its low-light capabilities, handled difficult lighting well, and recorded exceptionally sharp pictures with excellent color. These results, along with the camera's extensive exposure controls, make the S85 well-suited for just about any shooting scenario, although slightly longer than average shutter lag in full autofocus and manual focus modes might be a concern when shooting sports or other fast-paced action.
Conclusion
Overall, we found the Sony DSC-S85 to be a very pleasing upgrade to the already excellent S75 model. The fully manual and automatic exposure modes -- along with adjustable ISO settings, Scene Preset modes, advanced Movie features, and automatic E-mail option -- make the camera features perfect for pros and amateurs alike. New camera electronics and higher image resolution have further improved the S85's excellent image quality and speeded some aspects of camera operation. As we've said before, we really like Sony's new user interface, which employs a less involved LCD menu than earlier models, and provides far more external controls, dramatically decreasing the reliance on the LCD monitor. Maintaining the compact size and easy portability of its predecessors, the S85 is a welcome addition to Sony's Cyber-shot digicam line, with a wide range of features that should please almost any consumer. Our only (minor) complaint was the lack of provision for nonproprietary external flash units. In every other way though, we found the S85 to be of excellent design, and a real value leader with Sony's aggressive pricing at introduction. Highly recommended.
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