Canon TX1 Exposure

Saturation & Hue Accuracy
Overall very good color, with good hue accuracy. Some slight oversaturation in reds, blues, and greens, but still quite good results.

Saturation. The Canon PowerShot TX1 oversaturates the strong red tones, and some blues and greens a little, but the results are still quite pleasing. Most consumer digital cameras produce color that's more highly saturated (more intense) than found in the original subjects. This is simply because most people like their color a bit brighter than life.

Skin tones. The TX1 did render skin tones slightly on the warm side in most cases, but many consumers find slightly warm skin tones more pleasing than cooler ones. Where oversaturation is most problematic is on Caucasian skin tones, as it's very easy for these "memory colors" to be seen as too bright, too pink, too yellow, etc.

Hue. Here, the TX1 again performed well, though it pushed cyan tones toward blue (a common occurrence among Canon digital cameras), some reds toward orange and some oranges towards yellow Still, very good results. The other important part of color rendition is hue accuracy. Hue is "what color" the color is.

Exposure and White Balance

Indoors, incandescent lighting

Good color with the Auto white balance setting, though a hint warm. Manual white balance was better. Average positive exposure compensation required.

Color balance indoors under incandescent lighting was only slightly warm with the Auto white balance setting, though the Manual and Incandescent options produced much more accurate results. Because the Incandescent setting had a hint of a cool, magenta cast, I chose the slightly warmer (and more natural-looking) Manual setting. The Canon TX1 required an average amount of positive exposure compensation here, at +1.0 EV. Despite the slight warm cast, overall color with the Manual white balance setting is excellent, without strong purple tints in the blue flowers. (Many digital cameras reproduce these flowers with a dark, purplish tint, so the TX1 performed very well here.) Our test lighting for this shot is a mixture of 60 and 100 watt household incandescent bulbs, a pretty yellow light source, but a very common one in typical home settings here in the U.S.

Outdoors, daylight
Good color and exposure, though slightly high contrast with the default setting.

Outdoors, the Canon PowerShot TX1 performed pretty well, with only slight overexposure in the outdoor wide shot. The camera required less than the average amount of positive exposure compensation on the portrait. Default contrast is on the high side, though the camera's contrast adjustment did a pretty good job of taming the exposure without strongly affecting the color. The TX1 captured good color outdoors, without too strong of a warm cast. Overall, pretty good results here.

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Resolution
High resolution, 1,250 ~ 1,300 lines of strong detail.

Our laboratory resolution chart revealed sharp, distinct line patterns down to about 1,250 lines per picture height horizontally, and about 1,300 lines vertically. Extinction occurred between 1,800 and 1,900 lines vertically, and didn't really occur in the horizontal direction. 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.

See full set of test images with explanations
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Sharpness & Detail
Sharp images overall, though slight edge-enhancement on high-contrast subjects. Moderate noise suppression limits detail in the shadows.

Sharpness. The Canon PowerShot TX1 captures reasonably sharp images, though with slightly mottled detail. Some edge enhancement artifacts are visible on high-contrast subjects such as the crop above left, but it's minimal and not uncommon. Edge enhancement creates the illusion of sharpness by enhancing colors and tones right at the edge of a rapid transition in color or tone.

Detail. The crop above right shows significant softening due to noise suppression, as the darker areas of Marti's hair show limited detail. 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.

ISO & Noise Performance
Low to moderate noise at the normal sensitivity settings, but very high noise and strong blurring at the higher settings, especially at ISO 1,600.

Noise levels are low to moderate at the Canon TX1's lower sensitivity settings, with much higher noise at ISO 400 and higher. Noise pixels are bright at the higher settings, which throws off the color balance a bit, and the grain pattern eliminates some of the finer details above ISO 400. At ISOs 800 and especially 1,600, noise is quite strong, obliterating detail.

Extremes: Sunlit and low light tests
High resolution with strong overall detail, but slightly high contrast and limited shadow detail. Excellent low-light performance, capable of capturing bright images in near darkness.

Sunlight:

The Canon PowerShot TX1 produced fairly high contrast with deep shadows under the harsh lighting of the test above. However, the camera's contrast adjustment handled this problem fairly well, without strongly affecting color balance or tonal gradations. Detail is limited in the shadow areas, with some noise suppression visible. Though some areas look a little dark at +0.3 EV, I preferred it to the image at +0.7 EV, which had too many blown highlights for my preference. (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.)

Note: 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.)

Low light: The Canon PowerShot TX1 performed well on our low light test, with good color from the Auto white balance setting. At the lower ISO settings (80 and 100), images were bright down to 1/8 foot-candle, which is about 1/8 as bright as average city street lighting at night. From ISO 200 to 1,600, images were bright down to the lowest light levels we test. The camera's autofocus system was able to focus on the subject down to just below the 1/4 foot-candle light level without the AF assist light, so you'll need to make sure it's enabled for darker conditions.

How bright is this? The one foot-candle light level that this test begins at roughly corresponds to the brightness of typical city street-lighting at night. Cameras performing well at that should be able to snap good-looking photos of street-lit scenes.

NOTE: This low light test is conducted with a stationary subject, and the camera mounted on a sturdy tripod. Most digital cameras will fail miserably when faced with a moving subject in dim lighting. (For example, a child's ballet recital or a holiday pageant in a gymnasium.) For such applications, you may have better luck with a digital SLR camera, but even there, you'll likely need to set the focus manually. For information and reviews on digital SLRs, refer to our SLR review index page.

Coverage and Range
Slightly dim exposures at the default exposure setting; the camera required average exposure compensation for flash exposures. Typical range.

Coverage. Flash coverage was slightly uneven at wide angle and at telephoto. Indoors, under incandescent background lighting, the Canon TX1's flash underexposed our subject a little at its default setting, requiring a +1.0 EV exposure compensation adjustment to get bright results. The camera's Slow-Sync flash mode required only +0.7 EV exposure compensation, though with a noticeable orange cast.

ISO 100 Range. At wide angle, shots at ISO 100 are bright out to a distance of about 8 feet, decreasing in brightness from that point on. At full telephoto and ISO 100, even the 6-foot shot is a little dim, and the images darken from there. A typical result for a camera with a tiny flash.

Manufacturer Specified Flash Test. In the shots above, the TX1 seems to perform exactly as Canon says it will at wide angle, producing a good exposure at the rated distance with its ISO set to Auto. Results were a bit dim at telephoto, but the reflection may have affected the metering system.

Note: Our standard test method for flash range uses a fixed setting of ISO 100, to provide a fair basis of comparison between cameras. We've now also begun shooting two shots using the manufacturer-specified camera settings, at the range the company claims for the camera, to assess the validity of the specific claims.

Print Quality
Good print quality, slightly oversaturated color, good 13x19 inch prints. ISO 400 images are soft but usable at 11x14, ISO 800 shots are still good at 8x10. ISO 1,600 shots are better at 4x6.

The Canon PowerShot TX1 had enough resolution to make decent 13x19 inch prints, if a little soft on close inspection; sharpness improves at 11x14. ISO 400 images still look good at 11x14, which is quite a surprise, but saturation in the reds increases somewhat unnaturally. Contrast and saturation are increased dramatically at ISO 800, but 8x10 images are still usable. ISO 800 images still look good at 8x10, better at 5x7, and ISO 1,600 images are better at 4x6 due to dark, grainy shadows and mottled color. Not a bad performance from such a long zoom lens, again in a very small camera.

Note: Testing hundreds of digital cameras, we've found that you can only tell just so much about a camera's image quality by viewing its images on-screen. Ultimately, there's no substitute for printing a lot of images and examining them closely. For this reason, we now routinely print sample images from the cameras we test on our Canon Pro 9000 studio printer, and on the Canon iP5200 here in the office. (See the Canon i9900 review for details on that model.)