Review First Posted: 09/09/2004, Updated: 11/30/2004
MSRP $699 US
Digital Cameras - Sony Cyber-shot DSC-V3 Test Images
I've begun including links in our reviews to a Thumbnail
index page for the test shots. The data on this page includes a host
of information on the images, including shutter speed, ISO setting, compression
setting, etc. Rather than clutter the page below with all that detail,
we're posting the thumbnail index so only those interested in the information
need wade through it!
"Sunlit" Portrait: (This is my new "Outdoor" Portrait test - read more about
it here.)
High resolution and strong detail, with good color. Contrast is slightly
high, but pretty good detail still in the shadows and midtones.
The extreme tonal range of this image makes it a tough shot for many
digicams, which is precisely why I set it up this way, and why I shoot
it with no fill flash or reflector to open the shadows. The object is
to hold both highlight and shadow detail without producing a "flat"
picture with muddy colors, and the Cyber-shot DSC-V3 performed fairly
well.
The shot at right was taken with a +0.7 EV exposure
compensation adjustment, which results in bright highlights, though pretty
good midtones. Contrast is a little high here, and detail is lost in the
extreme highlights. Both the DSC-V3's Auto
and Daylight white balance settings resulted
in warm casts, so I chose the slightly more accurate color of the Manual
setting for the main series (despite a slight red cast).
Marti's skin tones look pretty good (just a little oversaturated, to
my eye), but the blue flowers in the bouquet are a bit more purplish than
in real life. (Many digicams have trouble with this blue, often producing
strong purple tints in what is really a light navy blue with only hints
of purple.) Color looks good throughout the rest of the frame as well,
if slightly dark. Resolution is very high, and detail is excellent in
the flower bouquet. Marti's features also show strong detail, as do the
creases in the cloth background, but detail is lost in the subtle shading
of her hair, due to a slightly overaggressive anti-noise system. Shadow
detail is good, and image noise is moderate.
To view the entire exposure series from zero to +1.0 EV, see files V3OUTMP0.HTM
through V3OUTMP3.HTM on the thumbnail index page.
Contrast Series: The DSC-V3's default tone curve is a bit more contrasty than I'd personally
prefer, but its low contrast option helps a great deal with the deliberately
harsh lighting of this test.
Saturation Series: The V3's color saturation adjustment covers a good range, but I'd
really like to see it with five steps across the same range, rather than
the three offered.
Excellent resolution and detail, though slightly
high contrast (still good midtone detail though).
Though contrast is again slightly high from the harsh
lighting, the Sony DSC-V3 captures pretty good midtone detail here. The
shot at right was taken with a +0.7 EV exposure compensation adjustment,
which looks pretty good overall. The DSC-V3's 4x zoom lens helps prevent
geometric distortion in Marti's features, and captures really extraordinary
(verging on embarrassing) detail.
To view the entire exposure series from zero to +1.0 EV, see files V3OUTFACAP0.HTM
through V3OUTFACAP3.HTM on the thumbnail index page.
Slight underexposure with the flash in its normal mode, even at the
High intensity setting. Similar results with Slow-Sync mode, though with
a strong warm cast.
The Sony DSC-V3's built-in flash proved a bit weak here, even with the
intensity set to High. (Results were very dark
at the Normal intensity setting.) Color balance
is slightly warm from the background incandescent lighting, though Marti's
skin tone isn't too bad and the flower bouquet looks good. The camera's
Slow-Sync flash setting also required the High
intensity adjustment, though color was much warmer because the longer
exposure let in much more of the room lighting. Lighting is somewhat more
even here, but the orange cast is very strong.
Slightly cool, but still good, color with the Manual white balance
setting, about average exposure compensation required.
This shot is always a very tough test of a camera's white balance capability,
given the strong, yellowish color cast of the household incandescent bulbs
used for the lighting. The Sony DSC-V3's Auto
and Incandescent white balance settings both
resulted in warm casts, with the Auto setting producing the strongest
of the two. Though slightly cool overall, I preferred color with the Manual
setting. (Some users would doubtless like the results with the Incandescent
setting though, as being more representative of the original scene lighting.)
Marti's skin tone looks very good, and the flower bouquet looks about
right as well. The blue flowers, however, are very dark and purplish (a
common problem under this difficult light source, even when the overall
white balance has been corrected to neutral). The main shot was taken
with a +1.0 EV exposure compensation adjustment, which is about average.
To view the entire exposure series from zero to +1.3 EV, see files V3INMP0.HTM
through V3INMP4.HTM on the thumbnail index page.
ISO Series:
At ISOs 100 and 200, image noise is visible but fairly low, and doesn't
interfere significantly with detail. At ISO 400, the image softens and
color balance appears to warm a fair amount, but the noise is pretty well
held in check, and the image is well within the "usable" category.
Image noise does increase to a very high level at ISO 800, and color warms
still further, but the results still aren't as bad as I'd expect for such
a high sensitivity setting.
Good color with the Manual white balance setting, and very high resolution
and detail.
Both the Sony DSC-V3's Auto and Manual
white balance settings performed pretty well here, but I chose the Manual
setting as the most accurate overall, based on the white value of the
house trim. The Daylight setting instead
resulted in a warm cast. Resolution is very high, and detail is strong
in the tree limbs, front shrubbery, and house front. Details are sharp
in the center of the frame, and soften only a little in the corners. (Note
though, that the DSC-V3 is probably capable of picking up more detail
than this poster has in it, despite the fact that it was made from a 4x5
negative shot with an extremely sharp lens.)
High resolution and strong detail, but high contrast limits dynamic
range somewhat.
This image is shot at infinity to test far-field
lens performance. NOTE that this image cannot be directly compared to
the other "house" shot, which is a poster, shot in the studio.
The rendering of detail in the poster will be very different than in this
shot, and color values (and even the presence or absence of leaves on
the trees!) will vary in this subject as the seasons progress. In general
though, you can evaluate detail in the bricks, shingles and window detail,
and in the tree branches against the sky. Compression artifacts are most
likely to show in the trim along the edge of the roof, in the bricks,
or in the relatively "flat" areas in the windows.
This is my ultimate "resolution shot,"
given the infinite range of detail in a natural scene like this, and the
Sony DSC-V3 captures a lot of fine detail. The leaf patterns in the front
shrubbery and in the tree limbs above the roof show a lot of fine detail,
as does the brick pattern on the house front. While I saw some evidence
of over-sharpening in the V3's resolution target shots, I really didn't
notice any in natural scenes like this one. (Which is, of course, really
the ultimate test of a digicam.) Details here are crisp and sharp, with
relatively little evidence of "halos" around objects caused
by the sharpening process. The "low sharpness" option produces
images that takes strong low-radius sharpening in Photoshop(tm) very well,
but I did notice in playing with the V3's images that strong sharpening
applied to even the highest-quality JPEGs tended to reveal JPEG artifacts.
This is a little unusual in my experience among top-tier digicams. While
it's important to note that the V3's JPEG artifacts in its highest-quality
mode are essentially invisible in unmodified images, people who like to
sharpen post-exposure may want to shoot any photos in TIFF or RAW mode
that they're planning to output as very large prints.
Turning to dynamic range, the bright sunlight causes
the camera to lose essentially all detail in the bright white paint surrounding
the bay window, making the window panes look almost like an illustration.
Detail is also low in the shadow area above the front door as well, further
evidence of a limited dynamic range. The table below shows a standard
resolution and quality series, followed by ISO, sharpness, contrast, saturation,
and color effects series.
ISO Series: As above, the Sony DSC-V3 shows visible but low image noise at ISOs
100 and 200 (just barely perceptible at ISO 100, more so at 200).
At ISO 400, the noise is definitely visible, but is well within what I'd
personally consider to be an acceptable range. At ISO 800, the noise is
quite pronounced, but still isn't nearly as bad as that from many competing
digicams at that ISO level. Overall, a very good job.
Sharpness Series: As mentioned above, while the Sony DSC-V3's default in-camera sharpening
looks a little excessive on artificial targets like the resolution chart,
in natural scenes like this, it results in relatively few artifacts. The
low sharpening option takes unsharp masking in Photoshop well, but strong/tight
sharpening there reveals JPEG artifacts.
Contrast Series: The Sony DSC-V3's contrast adjustment does help a little with handling
the harsh lighting of this subject, but I'd really like to see its range
extended, with another step or two in the low-contrast direction. Its
action here seems to be more on the shadow and lower midtone values than
on the highlights: Using the low contrast setting in conjunction with
a slightly lower overall exposure might have had a greater effect on highlight
detail than just the contrast reduction by itself.
A nice 4x zoom range. High quality auxiliary lenses.
I routinely shoot this series of images to show the field of view for
each camera, with the lens at full wide angle, at maximum telephoto (4x,
in this case), and at full telephoto with the digital zoom enabled. I
also shot with the DSC-V3's wide angle and telephoto accessory lens adaptors.
The Sony DSC-V3's lens is equivalent to a 34-136mm zoom on a 35mm camera.
That corresponds to a moderate wide angle to a pretty substantial telephoto.
Following are the results at each zoom setting.
Sony manufactures a pair of auxiliary lenses for the DSC-V3, extending
the lens' focal length capability at both the wide-angle and telephoto
ends of its range. These look like high-quality optics, with a lot of
glass (meaning their use should result in relatively little reduction
in the effective aperture of the camera's lens). The shots below largely
confirm my impressions of these as quality optics, as they're quite
sharp from corner to corner, and there's relatively little chromatic
aberration in either. (The wide-angle example is a little problematic
though, in that the very wide angle of coverage led the camera to focus
on the tree branches intruding on the frame from the upper left, with
the result that the house itself and the trees around it are somewhat
out of focus. I'll try to repeat this shot, if I can find time before
sending the camera and lenses back.)
Slightly warm color, but still good results. High resolution and strong
detail.
This shot is often a tough test for digicams, as the abundance of blue
in the composition frequently tricks white balance systems into producing
a warm color balance. Both the Sony DSC-V3's Auto
and Daylight white balance settings produced
slightly warm color balances, while the Manual
setting produced a cooler, more magenta cast. I preferred the warmer skin
tones of the Auto and Daylight settings, so I chose the Auto setting for
the main shot. Though the warm cast creates slight purplish tints in the
blue background and blue robe, overall color still looks good. Resolution
is very high, and detail is strong in the embroidered bird wings on the
blue robe, as well as in the beaded necklaces and instrument strings.
(The original data file for this poster was only 20MB though, so cameras
like the DSC-V3 are capable of showing more detail than the poster has
in it.)
An average macro area, albeit with very high resolution and detail.
Flash throttles down a bit too much, however, underexposing slightly.
The Sony DSC-V3 captured a roughly average minimum area of 3.44 x 2.58
inches (87 x 66 millimeters) in the macro test. Resolution is very high,
however, showing a lot of fine detail in the dollar bill, coins, and brooch.
Details soften toward the corners of the frame, but are fairly sharp in
the center. (Most digicams produce images with soft corners when shooting
in their Macro modes.) The DSC-V3's flash throttles
down almost too well for the macro area, as the resulting exposure is
a little darker than it ideally would be. (The "high" flash
setting would likely have corrected this though, as the flash exposure
adjustment does work in macro mode.) Overall, a very good macro performance.
Good exposure and color, strong reds and greens are a bit overly bright.
Though very slightly magenta, the Sony DSC-V3's Manual
white balance setting produced the best results here, though the Auto
setting looked pretty good as well (just a little warm). The Daylight
setting resulted in a stronger warm cast. Exposure looks good, and the
subtle tonal variations of the Q60 target are clear and distinct. Color
in the large blocks of the MacBeth(tm) chart looks pretty good, although
the V3 does tend to make the bright colors very bright, and it
somewhat oversaturates the bright green and red swatches in particular.
The overall effect on "natural" subjects is quite pleasing though,
so I'd rate the V3's color as very good. The shadow area of the charcoal
briquettes shows good detail, with fairly low noise.
Now, for the REAL technoids, Imatest!
I've recently begun using Norman Koren's excellent "Imatest"
analysis program for quantitative, thoroughly objective analysis of digicam
test images. For those interested, I've prepared a page summarizing
what Imatest showed me about the V3's images.
The results in the tests below mirror those seen above in other test shots.
The test series are repeated here without further comment, for the benefit
of our more quantitatively-oriented readers.
Excellent low-light performance, with good color and exposure, and
low image noise, at the darkest light levels of this test. Good AF performance
even without the AF-assist, excellent with Sony's Hologram AF-assist option.
The DSC-V3 produced clear, bright, usable images down to the 1/16 foot-candle
(0.67 lux) limit of my test, with good color at all four ISO settings.
(I did notice minor color shifts toward a warm or a pink color balance
at the lower light levels, but the shift was relatively slight.) Noise
is quite low at the 100 and 200 ISO settings, and even at ISO 400 was
quite a bit lower than I'd normally expect. At ISO 800, noise is higher,
but still less than one would expect at such a high sensitivity, and color
remains quite good in the face of it. Since city street-lighting at night
generally corresponds to a light level of about one foot-candle, the DSC-V3
should do very well for after-dark photography in typical outdoor settings.
Its autofocus system responded very well also, focusing down to light
levels a bit under 1/4 foot-candle with the AF illuminator turned off.
Sony's Hologram AF-assist light works better than most, and to greater
distances, letting the camera easily focus in total darkness. The table
below shows the best exposure I was able to obtain for each of a range
of illumination levels. Images in this table (like all sample photos)
are untouched, exactly as they came from the camera.
(Note: If you'd like to use a light meter to
check light levels for subjects you might be interested in shooting, a
light level of one foot-candle corresponds to a normal exposure of two
seconds at f/2.8 and ISO 100.)
1 fc
11 lux
1/2 fc
5.5 lux
1/4 fc
2.7 lux
1/8 fc
1.3 lux
1/16 fc
0.67 lux
ISO
100
2 sec
f2.8
5 sec
f2.8
13 sec
f2.8
25 sec
f2.8
30 sec
f2.8
ISO
200
1.3 sec
f2.8
3 sec
f2.8
7 sec
f2.8
13 sec
f2.8
30 sec
f2.8
ISO
400
1/1 sec
f2.8
1.3 sec
f2.8
4 sec
f2.8
8 sec
f2.8
15 sec
f2.8
ISO
800
1/2 sec
f2.8
1/1 sec
f2.8
2 sec
f2.8
4 sec
f2.8
10 sec
f2.8
Flash Range Test
A moderately-powerful flash, with a useful range at telephoto focal
lengths of about 10 feet.
In my testing, the DSC-V3's flash dimly illuminated the test target at
14 feet, showing decreasing intensity from about the 10-foot distance
on. Below is the flash range series, with distances from eight to 14 feet
from the target.
High resolution, 1,550 lines of "strong detail." High barrel
distortion at wide angle, and moderately high pincushion at telephoto.
Low to moderate chromatic aberration. Very good sharpness in the corners
of the frame.
The DSC-V3 performed very well on the "laboratory" resolution
test chart. It didn't start showing artifacts in the test patterns until
resolutions as low as 1,200 lines per picture height horizontally, but
around 800-1,000 lines vertically. I found "strong detail" out
to at least 1,550 lines, though you could also argue for 1,600 lines in
both directions. "Extinction" of the target patterns didn't
occur until about 1,900 lines.
Looking at the results from Imatest, the "MTF 50" numbers tend
to correlate best with visual perceptions of sharpness, so those are what
I focus on here. The uncorrected resolution figures are 1548 line widths
per picture height in the horizontal direction (corresponding to the vertically-oriented
edge), and 1331 along the vertical axis (corresponding to the horizontally-oriented
edge), for a combined average of 1440 LW/PH. Correcting to a "standardized"
sharpening with a one-pixel radius reduces these numbers a bit, to an
average of 1321 LW/PH, a good if not spectacular number.
Geometric distortion on the DSC-V3 is about average at the wide-angle
end, where I measured approximately 0.8 percent barrel distortion. The
telephoto end fared a little better, as I measured approximately 0.4 percent
pincushion distortion. Chromatic aberration is low to moderate, as I measured
about four of five pixels of coloration on either side of the target lines,
the degree of color ranging from slight to moderate. (This distortion
is visible as a very slight colored fringe around the objects at the edges
of the field of view on the resolution target.) One of the stronger points
of the V3's lens is how sharp it keeps the corners of the frames. There's
relatively little of the softness in the corners that I've come to more
or less expect in consumer/prosumer digicam lenses.
A tight optical viewfinder, but nearly accurate LCD monitor.
The Sony DSC-V3's optical viewfinder is very tight, and also rather
variable, showing only 79 percent of the final image area at wide angle,
but about 88 percent at telephoto. (A tight viewfinder is bad enough,
but one that varies in its coverage as the zoom setting changes is very
bad indeed, as it makes it very difficult to judge how much of the image
the viewfinder is cropping.) Happily, the LCD monitor offered essentially
100% coverage, within the limits of this test. Given that I like LCD
monitors to be as close to 100 percent accuracy as possible, the DSC-V3's
LCD monitor performed pretty well here, but its optical viewfinder could
definitely use some help. Flash distribution is a little uneven at wide
angle, with some falloff at the corners and edges of the frame. At telephoto,
flash distribution is more uniform.
