Sony MVC-CD400Sony expands its CD-equipped camera line, adding a four megapixel CCD, a huge buffer memory, Hologram Autofocus, and a standard hot shoe!<<Optics :(Previous) | (Next): Shutter Lag & Cycle Time Tests>> Page 6:Exposure & FlashReview First Posted: 2/20/2002 |
Exposure
Exposure control on the CD400 is just as straightforward and uncomplicated as on the CD300 model. A Mode dial on top of the camera lets you quickly select major camera operating modes. Additional control buttons on the back panel let you change basic exposure settings, such as metering options, exposure compensation, and AE Lock with a single button-push. The small Command wheel (on the right side of the camera back) simplifies exposure adjustment even more, by allowing you to change exposure compensation, manual focus, aperture, and shutter speed, simply by first using it to select the functioned desired, pressing in to highlight the function, and then turning it to make adjustments. (This is actually much simpler than it sounds, particularly once you get used to how the controls work.)
Four main exposure modes offer varying levels of automatic or manual control: Program AE, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, and Manual. In Program AE mode, the camera controls the basic exposure, but lets you determine all other variables, such as ISO, white balance, and flash settings. Shutter Priority lets you set the shutter speed from 1/1,000 to eight seconds, while the camera controls the lens aperture. Alternately, Aperture Priority mode lets you set the lens aperture from f/2.0 (f/2.5 with the lens set at telephoto) to f/8.0 while the camera sets the appropriate shutter speed. In both Aperture and Shutter Priority modes, the shutter and aperture values will flash in the LCD panel (when the Shutter button is pressed halfway) if the camera disagrees with the chosen settings. This gives you an opportunity to adjust the exposure without wasting a shot.
Manual exposure mode provides complete control over aperture settings, shutter speed, ISO, white balance, and metering. The camera reports the amount of under- or overexposure it thinks you've selected, with an EV value in the LCD monitor just above the aperture and shutter speed settings. If the camera disagrees with the shutter and aperture values, the EV value will flash in the LCD panel (when the Shutter button is pressed halfway), letting you change the settings for a better exposure. In all three adjustable modes (Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and Manual), the Command wheel adjusts the aperture or shutter speed settings. An arrow on the LCD screen points to one adjustable setting, such as aperture or shutter speed. Pressing in on the wheel highlights that setting in yellow, allowing you to make adjustments by simply turning the wheel. Pressing on the wheel a second time removes the yellow highlight, so that you can move the yellow arrow to a new adjustable setting. I recall having some trouble with the Command wheel on the CD300, apparently because I sometimes pressed it too rapidly. (I speculated that it had too aggressive a "debounce" delay on it.) This difficulty has apparently been corrected on the CD400, as I had no trouble whatsoever with the Command wheel on this new model.
In addition to the four main exposure modes, there are four preset Scene modes that adjust the camera for shooting in specific situations: Twilight, Twilight Portrait, Landscape, and Portrait. Twilight mode adjusts the exposure to capture a bright subject in dark surroundings (neon lights would be a good example), without washing out the color. Because Twilight mode usually employs a slower shutter speed, a tripod is recommended to prevent blurring from camera movement. Twilight Portrait works along similar lines, but uses the flash in a slow-sync setting to capture a fully-illuminated subject in front of the darker background. Landscape mode uses a smaller aperture setting to keep both the background and foreground in sharp focus, allowing you to capture broad vistas of scenery. Portrait mode uses a larger lens aperture setting to decrease the depth of field, keeping the subject in sharp focus, with the background slightly blurred.
For normal exposures, the CD400 uses an "averaging" metering system, meaning that the camera averages exposure readings throughout the image to determine the best overall exposure. For high-contrast subjects, a Spot Metering option (selected via a button on the back panel) takes the exposure reading from the very center of the frame. A center crosshair target appears on the LCD monitor (inside the focus brackets), to show the location of the spot exposure reading. For metering off-center subjects, you can take your reading of the subject you want metered, then use the AE Lock button on the back panel to lock the exposure reading. Once exposure is locked, you can recompose the image and release the shutter. Spot metering is very handy when dealing with difficult subjects, such as portrait shots with strong backlighting, or any subject that's substantially brighter or darker than the background.
Exposure compensation can be manually adjusted from -2 to +2 exposure equivalents (EV) in one-third-step increments, in all exposure modes except Manual. The camera's light sensitivity can be set through the Record menu to Auto, or 100, 200, or 400 ISO equivalents, increasing the camera's low-light shooting capabilities with higher ISO settings. For exposures longer than 1/2 second, the CD400 automatically employs a Noise Reduction system, to reduce the amount of image noise from long shutter times. In my testing, I found the CD400's noise reduction processing to be very effective at eliminating so-called "hot pixels" in long time exposures. (Do note though, that the CD400 takes twice as long to complete an exposure when the noise reduction system is active. This is because it actually takes two exposures, one of the subject, and one with the shutter closed, to measure the sensor noise so it can subtract it back out of the photo. Thus, at the maximum exposure time of 8 seconds, the camera will actually be tied up for 16 seconds for each exposure.)
White Balance (WB) can also be controlled in all exposure modes, with available settings of Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent, Incandescent, and One-Push (manual setting). One-Push lets you set the camera's white balance by pointing it at a white card and telling it to use that color as a reference. As with many other Sony cameras, the CD400 offers a Picture Effects menu, providing a little in-camera creativity. Settings like Solarize, Black & White, Sepia, and Negative Art can add interest to your images by altering color or reversing the highlights and shadows.
The CD400 also offers a menu selection for adjusting image sharpening in-camera, providing a range of sharpness values from -2 to +2 in 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 low-quality inkjet printer. On the other hand, the lowest sharpness setting may be useful for images that you plan to manipulate in Photoshop or any other image editing application. In these programs, you typically want to apply sharpening at the end of the manipulation process. Finally, a 10-second self-timer can be activated by pressing the down Arrow button on the back panel. Once the Shutter button has been fully depressed, the small LED lamp on the front of the camera counts down the seconds until the shutter is released (a green dot in the LCD monitor flashes as well). You can cancel the timer by pressing the down Arrow button again.
When you have images stored on the CD-R, the left arrow key on the Arrow rocker button (back panel) activates a quick review of the previously captured image, and offers a delete option for removing the image. Pressing the arrow key a second time returns you to the normal image display screen, as does pressing the Shutter button halfway.
Flash
The built-in, pop-up flash on the CD400 has three settings that are activated by pressing the Flash button on the Arrow rocker pad: Auto, Forced, and Suppressed. Auto puts the camera in charge of whether or not the flash fires, based on existing light levels. Forced Flash means that the flash always fires, regardless of light level, and Suppressed Flash prevents the flash from firing, regardless of light levels. The flash is released from its compartment once the Shutter button is halfway pressed in either Auto or Forced modes. A Red-Eye Reduction mode is activated through the Setup menu, and works with both Auto and Forced flash modes. Red-Eye Reduction fires a small pre-flash to reduce the occurrence of red-eye effect in people pictures. When shooting in Twilight Portrait mode, the camera times the flash with the slower shutter speed, so that subjects in the foreground are well lit, and the darker background shows more ambient light.
You can adjust the flash intensity to High, Normal, or Low through the Record menu. This option makes the flash more accommodating to varying light levels or different subjects. I liked the fact that I could adjust exposure for the flash and ambient lighting separately, a feature that makes it easier to achieve more balanced exposures. In Normal mode, flash range extends from 1.6 inches to 16.4 feet (0.5 to 5.0 meters), an almost 2 meter increase in range over the earlier CD300 model.
An external flash sync socket is located on the left side of the camera, directly above the digital and video jack compartment. I was very pleased to see the addition of a hot shoe mount on top of the camera, as the previous CD300 model featured a "cold" shoe with no contacts. Through the Setup menu, you can turn the hot shoe on or off. The external flash hot shoe features a single contact, which means there's no exposure feedback provided between a flash unit connected there and the camera. (This is a principle argument in favor of using Sony's own HFL-F1000 dedicated accessory flash with the CD400.) Still, despite the "dumb" nature of the hot shoe connection, it's a real boon to photographers who have one or more non-dedicated strobes in their gear kit, or for those who want to use the CD400 with studio strobes. (A side note though: Be careful that you don't connect a studio pack with high trigger voltage to the hot shoe of the CD400! Digicam sync contacts aren't designed to handle high voltages, and you risk frying your camera if you plug in studio equipment directly. - Look for a "safe trigger" unit that uses a low voltage to trigger the strobes. Likewise, avoid certain older shoe-mount amateur strobes, such as the "HV" units from Vivitar, which present high voltages to the sync contacts.)
Movie and Sound Recording
Audio recording is a big feature addition on the CD400, relative to the earlier CD200 and 300. In any of the CD400's still capture modes, you can record short sound clips to accompany images. This option is available through the Record menu by selecting the Voice record mode. You can record up to 60 seconds of sound for each image by holding down the Shutter button. By pressing and releasing the Shutter button quickly, you can record for only five seconds.
The Movie mode is accessed on the Mode dial on top of the camera by selecting the film frame icon. You can record moving images with sound at either High Quality (HQX) 320 pixels, or standard quality 320 x 240 and 160 x 112 pixels. Standard quality resolution sizes record movies using Sony's MPEG EX technology, which offers longer recording times. Thanks to the CD400's efficient use of buffer memory and (I'm guessing here) a higher recording speed on its CD-R drive, the camera works more like a digital video camera, with very long video recording times. (Although video and audio quality won't be in the same league as a real camcorder: See below.) When I was shooting with the camera, I had an available 89 minutes of video recording time available with a newly-inserted CD in the lowest-quality recording mode. The time ticked down as I recorded still images and sound clips, but I was amazed that the recording time was limited only by CD capacity. At the 320 x 240 and 160 x 112 pixel settings, the MPEG EX format records at eight frames per second, with an audio sampling rate of 4 KHz. Maximum recording time with a blank CD is 89 minutes, 24 seconds in the 160x112 mode, or 31:16 in the standard 320x240 mode. The 320 HQX setting captures 16 frames per second, uses less image compression, and increases the audio sampling rate to 10 KHz. It also only has a recording time of five minutes, 52 seconds available though. Additionally, movies captured in the 320 HQ setting play back full screen in Playback mode, as opposed to the smaller display shown with the MPEG EX settings.
It does need to be said though, that the CD400 won't challenge high-quality conventional camcorders though. It's video resolution is lower than good-quality camcorders, even in HQX mode, and the audio quality really isn't in the same league at all. In quiet moments of the recording, I could easily hear the faint twittering of the CD drive as it recorded the data. - It seems that Sony's camcorder engineers still have some things to teach the still camera group about sonic isolation between drive mechanics and the camera's microphone.
Clip Motion and Multi Burst
This is a slick little feature that I've really enjoyed on many Sony digicams. Clip motion first appeared on the Sony DSC-P1, and now seems to be a pretty standard option on all the latest Sony models. The Clip Motion capture mode turns the CD400 into an animation camera, recording up to 10 frames of still images, which are combined within the camera into a single GIF file for animated playback. Frames can be captured at any time interval, with successive presses of the Shutter button. When you've captured as many photos as you need, you just press the center of the Four Way Arrow pad to tell the camera to finish the sequence, and it'll merge all the images into an animated GIF file. Available image sizes are Normal (160 x 120 pixels) and Mobile (80 x 72 pixels), and the number of actual captured frames may vary with image size and available CD space. (You have a maximum of 10, but could be constrained to fewer if your disc is very full.) Files are saved in GIF format, and are played back with (approximate) 0.5-second intervals between frames. Unlike Movie mode, the onboard flash may be used with Clip Motion.
Multi-Burst is a new recording option I first noticed on the DSC-P51 and DSC-P71 Cyber-Shot models. The mode captures an extremely rapid burst of images, stored as a single 1280x960 frame on the camera, and which are played back as a single movie (giving a slow-motion effect). You can select between Fine and Normal quality settings, and available frame intervals include 1/7.5-, 1/15-, or 1/30-second.
Special Record Modes
Like the CD300 and many other Sony digicams, the CD400 gives you several file format options for still images. Through the Record menu, you can select TIFF for uncompressed images, Voice (mentioned above), E-mail, Exposure Bracketing, Burst 3, or Normal modes. E-mail mode records a smaller (320 x 240-pixel) image size that's small enough to be easily sent to friends and family by e-mail. The e-mail image is recorded in addition to the image size selected through the Record menu's Image Size option. (The TIFF option likewise records a maximum-resolution TIFF image in addition to a JPEG at whatever size and quality setting you've selected.) Burst 3 mode lets you capture a maximum of three frames in rapid succession, at 0.5 second intervals. Actual frame rates might vary with the image resolution and amount of information to be recorded, but in all my tests, it came in at a solid 0.5 seconds per frame. In Exposure Bracketing mode, the camera takes a series of three images at different exposure readings: one at the normal meter reading, and two more at different EV settings. The exposure variance between shots is set through the Setup menu, through the "Bracket Step" option, with settings of +/- 1.0, 0.7, and 0.3 EV.
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