Petteri Sulonen
Forum Pro
Hiya, folks --
Some of you may remember the pretty lengthy postings I made on the Sony DSC-V3 I bought for the "take-anywhere" mission. I even wrote it up on my website: [ http://194.100.88.243/petteri/pont/Reviews/aa_Sony_DSC-V3/_Sony_DSC-V3.html ].
At the time, my preliminary verdict could be summed up as "great build, lightning-fast, sucky viewfinder, some design/usability niggles, OK image quality."
In the meantime, I've been carrying the camera in my satchel, and I've been using it to take pictures when the whim takes me, and I haven't gone out especially to shoot them. And in fact I've caught a few that are among the ones I like best from the past couple of years.
It hasn't really changed much. I'm still pretty happy with the camera, it gets the "take-anywhere" mission done fine, and I can't think of another camera in this class that's currently available that I'd rather have. So far, so good.
However, I had been hoping that I'd get used to the design/usability niggles -- and, in fact, I have gotten used to some of them. But unfortunately, others have in fact started to grate more, and a few that I liked originally I like less now.
First the good news. I have in fact gotten used to the form of the camera, which felt somewhat awkward to start with. I rarely have trouble finding the shutter release anymore, and only occasionally get my finger in front of the silly optical viewfinder. I still like the streamlined menu system.
And the thing that continues to amaze me, the one absolutely killer feature this camera has, is that it is F-A-S-T. I've never missed a shot with it because it focused too slowly or didn't focus at all.
So, with the excellent metering and focus performance, I'm willing to forgive a lot.
Another thing I like is the tonality and color rendition, with everything "turned down" -- the pictures have a very subtle, quiet look to them, and post-process quite well. The camera meters extremely well, and holds highlight and shadow detail nicely.
The lens is highly resistant to flare and handles backlight very well.
Then the bad.
One thing that drives me up the wall is that the camera shuts itself down within a couple of minutes of inactivity, or whenever I switch to playback mode for viewing pictures. I want to have the camera ready to shoot now when it's on my wrist. If I have to wait two, three seconds for the lens to extend, the shot will often be long gone. As far as I can tell, there's no way of changing this behaviour. If I'm wrong, someone please tell me how it can be done.
Another thing that I had originally thought wasn't too significant but that I've grown to dislike more is the pretty aggressive noise reduction even at low ISO. This means that fine, low-contrast detail gets "mushed out." You can't see it in screen-size images, but it's pretty readily apparent when printing even at 8 x 10, if the picture has that kind of detail. This one, for example:
I would much rather have a bit more noise if it meant I could retain a bit more texture detail.
One thing that I think Sony should be able to do better is automatic white balance. I've found that it's "off" more often than not, even in fairly easy lighting such as regular daylight. I've stopped using it, and tried to remember to set the presets instead. This is slightly annoying since it means I'm shooting differently with the PnS than with the dSLR (I use RAW with the latter, so the AWB doesn't really matter that much), and introduces another potential error source.
A few more "field notes."
The lens has a good deal of barrel distortion at the wide end (which isn't that wide to start with). Since that's how I mostly use it, it occasionally becomes a problem. I've in fact taken to correcting the distortion in post-processing -- something I haven't done with other cameras and lenses I've used. Not a huge deal, but something to keep in mind anyway -- and something I think shouldn't be too difficult to correct in-camera, at least for JPEG's.
The build is holding up fine, although I've really been abusing the camera. The paint has come off from a few points, and the markings on the slick mode dial are starting to chip -- this is a bit worrying since if they come off completely, I will have a problem.
I still don't like framing off the LCD. Yeah, it's big, but it's not that easy to see in bright daylight (now that we have some), and I find holding the camera out to be awkward and unstable. Again, please could we have a decent optical VF? Pretty please?
And I find the control system somewhat confusing. The jog dial that I originally liked isn't quite as fluid as I thought after all; it's too easy to make "false presses" and change the wrong settings, or have to correct them, and so on. IOW, the idea is good but the implementation needs a bit of work -- make the dial a bit bigger and the movements a bit more positive and requiring a bit more pressure. And as I mentioned in the article, the overall control layout seems just a bit haphazard -- as if the designers put the buttons wherever they would fit instead of thinking of it in a "photographer-centric" way.
But the bottom line is that I still don't think there's anything on the market that's much better for the job. Unfortunately, this reflects the state of the market more than any brilliant design by Sony.
Petteri
--
Me on photography: [ http://www.prime-junta.tk/ ]
Me on politics: [ http://p-on-p.blogspot.com/ ]
Some of you may remember the pretty lengthy postings I made on the Sony DSC-V3 I bought for the "take-anywhere" mission. I even wrote it up on my website: [ http://194.100.88.243/petteri/pont/Reviews/aa_Sony_DSC-V3/_Sony_DSC-V3.html ].
At the time, my preliminary verdict could be summed up as "great build, lightning-fast, sucky viewfinder, some design/usability niggles, OK image quality."
In the meantime, I've been carrying the camera in my satchel, and I've been using it to take pictures when the whim takes me, and I haven't gone out especially to shoot them. And in fact I've caught a few that are among the ones I like best from the past couple of years.
It hasn't really changed much. I'm still pretty happy with the camera, it gets the "take-anywhere" mission done fine, and I can't think of another camera in this class that's currently available that I'd rather have. So far, so good.
However, I had been hoping that I'd get used to the design/usability niggles -- and, in fact, I have gotten used to some of them. But unfortunately, others have in fact started to grate more, and a few that I liked originally I like less now.
First the good news. I have in fact gotten used to the form of the camera, which felt somewhat awkward to start with. I rarely have trouble finding the shutter release anymore, and only occasionally get my finger in front of the silly optical viewfinder. I still like the streamlined menu system.
And the thing that continues to amaze me, the one absolutely killer feature this camera has, is that it is F-A-S-T. I've never missed a shot with it because it focused too slowly or didn't focus at all.
So, with the excellent metering and focus performance, I'm willing to forgive a lot.
Another thing I like is the tonality and color rendition, with everything "turned down" -- the pictures have a very subtle, quiet look to them, and post-process quite well. The camera meters extremely well, and holds highlight and shadow detail nicely.
The lens is highly resistant to flare and handles backlight very well.
Then the bad.
One thing that drives me up the wall is that the camera shuts itself down within a couple of minutes of inactivity, or whenever I switch to playback mode for viewing pictures. I want to have the camera ready to shoot now when it's on my wrist. If I have to wait two, three seconds for the lens to extend, the shot will often be long gone. As far as I can tell, there's no way of changing this behaviour. If I'm wrong, someone please tell me how it can be done.
Another thing that I had originally thought wasn't too significant but that I've grown to dislike more is the pretty aggressive noise reduction even at low ISO. This means that fine, low-contrast detail gets "mushed out." You can't see it in screen-size images, but it's pretty readily apparent when printing even at 8 x 10, if the picture has that kind of detail. This one, for example:
I would much rather have a bit more noise if it meant I could retain a bit more texture detail.
One thing that I think Sony should be able to do better is automatic white balance. I've found that it's "off" more often than not, even in fairly easy lighting such as regular daylight. I've stopped using it, and tried to remember to set the presets instead. This is slightly annoying since it means I'm shooting differently with the PnS than with the dSLR (I use RAW with the latter, so the AWB doesn't really matter that much), and introduces another potential error source.
A few more "field notes."
The lens has a good deal of barrel distortion at the wide end (which isn't that wide to start with). Since that's how I mostly use it, it occasionally becomes a problem. I've in fact taken to correcting the distortion in post-processing -- something I haven't done with other cameras and lenses I've used. Not a huge deal, but something to keep in mind anyway -- and something I think shouldn't be too difficult to correct in-camera, at least for JPEG's.
The build is holding up fine, although I've really been abusing the camera. The paint has come off from a few points, and the markings on the slick mode dial are starting to chip -- this is a bit worrying since if they come off completely, I will have a problem.
I still don't like framing off the LCD. Yeah, it's big, but it's not that easy to see in bright daylight (now that we have some), and I find holding the camera out to be awkward and unstable. Again, please could we have a decent optical VF? Pretty please?
And I find the control system somewhat confusing. The jog dial that I originally liked isn't quite as fluid as I thought after all; it's too easy to make "false presses" and change the wrong settings, or have to correct them, and so on. IOW, the idea is good but the implementation needs a bit of work -- make the dial a bit bigger and the movements a bit more positive and requiring a bit more pressure. And as I mentioned in the article, the overall control layout seems just a bit haphazard -- as if the designers put the buttons wherever they would fit instead of thinking of it in a "photographer-centric" way.
But the bottom line is that I still don't think there's anything on the market that's much better for the job. Unfortunately, this reflects the state of the market more than any brilliant design by Sony.
Petteri
--
Me on photography: [ http://www.prime-junta.tk/ ]
Me on politics: [ http://p-on-p.blogspot.com/ ]
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