Sony DSC-T30 Exposure

Exposure and White Balance

Indoors, incandescent lighting
Moderate warm cast with both Auto and Incandescent white balance settings. Average exposure compensation required.

Color balance indoors under incandescent lighting was quite warm with both the Auto and Incandescent white balance modes, though the Incandescent setting resulted in the least strongest cast. That said, the impact of the warm color balance was much more evident on-screen than it was in prints made on the Canon i9900 printer here in our studio. Prints were a little yellowish, but the result was more an impression of the warmth of the original lighting than a defect in the color of the image. I found the best exposure with a +1.0 EV exposure compensation adjustment, about average for this shot, though the white highlights are a bit bright. (The image at +0.7 EV was just too dim overall.) Colors are somewhat dark and yellow here, making the blue flowers very dark and purplish. (A very common outcome for this shot.) Our test lighting for this shot is a mixture of 60 and 100 watt household incandescent bulb, a pretty yellow light source, but a very common one in typical home settings here in the US.

Outdoors, daylight
Slightly warm overall color balance, though very bright colors. About average exposure accuracy.

Outdoor shots generally showed accurate exposure but with a tendency to blow out highlights under harsh lighting. (The photos do as a result have a lot of "snap," that many consumers will find appealing. Shadow detail was somewhat limited, but nothing that would raise an alarm for a consumer digital camera. Exposure accuracy overall was about average, the camera requiring the normal amount of exposure compensation we're accustomed to seeing with consumer digicams on these shots.

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Resolution
High resolution, 1,400 lines of strong detail.

Our laboratory resolution chart revealed sharp, distinct line patterns down to about 1,400 lines per picture height, with extinction at around 2,000. Use these numbers to compare with other cameras of similar resolution, or use them to see just what higher resolution can mean in terms of potential detail. Beware that while you might be able to make out what looks like distinct lines at numbers higher than those we've mentioned here, the camera is just doing its best to continue interpreting the lines. If you zoom in and follow them from the wider portions, you'll see the lines converge and reappear several times, so the lines you see at 1,800 and higher are really only artifacts generated by the camera's imaging system.

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Sharpness & Detail
Fairly sharp images, slight oversharpening but relatively little blurring of detail from noise suppression.

Overall, the Sony DSC-T30's images are quite sharp, with moderate edge enhancement on the camera's part. (Edge enhancement creates the illusion of sharpness by enhancing colors and tones right at the edge of a rapid transition in color or tone.)

Noise-suppression systems in digital cameras tend to flatten-out detail in areas of subtle contrast. The effects can often be seen in shots of human hair, where the individual strands are lost and an almost "watercolor" look appears. The crop at far right shows this in the darkest areas of Marti's hair, which do show limited detail. That said, there are a few individual strands still visible in the darker midtones.

ISO & Noise Performance
Low to moderate noise at the normal sensitivity settings, very high noise that blurs detail at the higher settings.

The Sony DSC-T30's lower ISO settings performed quite well, producing low to moderate noise without noticeable blurring of fine detail. Starting at ISO 400, noise becomes much more evident, and the noise suppression processing begins to blur fine detail more. The 800 and 1,000 ISO settings result in very blurry images, with a bright, strong noise pattern that's very noticeable. (When printed, the ISO 800 and 1000 shots look grainy and rough even at print sizes as small as 4x6 inches, although they'd likely be acceptable to most consumers at that size.)

Extremes: Sunlit and low light tests
Very high resolution with good overall detail, though high contrast and limited shadow detail. Limited low-light capabilities, but entirely acceptable images under average city street lighting.

Sunlight:
Because digital cameras are more like slide film than negative film (in that they tend to have a more limited tonal range), we test them in the harshest situations to see how they handle scenes with bright highlights and dark shadows, as well as what kind of sensitivity they have in low light. The shot above is designed to mimic the very harsh, contrasty effect of direct noonday sunlight, a very tough challenge for most digital cameras. (You can read details of this test here.)

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T30 produced high contrast in response to the deliberately harsh lighting in the test above, with hot highlights the result. Detail was slightly limited in the highlights and shadows (more so in the shadows), though still pretty good overall. I found the best exposure with a +1.0 EV exposure compensation adjustment, even though the highlights really are quite blown, as the exposure at +0.7 EV left Marti's face and the colors in the flowers much too dark. (In "real life" though, be sure to use fill flash in situations like the one shown above; it's better to shoot in the shade when possible.)

Low light:
The Sony DSC-T30's maximum two-second exposure time (one second in all but night modes) limited its low-light shooting capabilities somewhat, though the camera was able to capture bright images under average city street lighting quite easily. At the higher ISO settings (800 and 1,000), the camera captured bright images to about 1/2 foot-candle, about half as bright as average city street lighting at night, but with very high image noise. The camera's autofocus system worked down to a little below the 1/4 foot-candle light level, even without the AF assist light, a very good performance. Do keep in mind, that the longer shutter times demand the use of a tripod or other camera support to get sharp photos. (A useful trick is to just prop the camera on a convenient surface, and use its self-timer to release the shutter. This avoids any jiggling from your finger pressing the shutter button, and can work quite well when you don't have a tripod handy.) That said, we found the T30's Super SteadyShot image stabilization to be very effective, as we were in some cases able to get acceptable shots hand-holding the camera at exposure times of a half-second or more. (!)