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HX1-more on Antiblur and Twilight

Started Jul 6, 2009 | Discussions thread
OP Jerry Stevens Senior Member • Posts: 2,571
Re: Antiblur and Twilight in Daylight--Conclusion

In daylight, the Twilight is much more successful than the Antiblur. The real test is not dark or medium colors, where the differences are minimized, but soft pastels and whites, which are the greatest challenge to CCD/CMOS sensors. In these daylight settings, the Antiblur mode regularly overexposes, producing less detail and lower dynamic range, whereas the Twilight regularly underexposes, but also produces much more detail and greater dynamic range.

Further, the Twilight mode is more successful in controlling noise than is the in-camera setting that the user can choose of LowNR (the "minus" setting, -NR). Trying to compensate with HighNR in manual mode will only result in more loss of detail, as the grayscale noise examples demonstrate. Thus, the Twilight mode actually seems to be more successful in garnishing shots with detail and dynamic range than any of the in-camera noise reduction settings. Quite odd to my mind, I must confess.

Finally, I notice that the camera's own "Intelligent Auto" mode is quite a competitor for getting decent shots. I would repeat what I have said in earlier posts about the iA mode that I should think any P&S user who chooses this setting on the HX1 will get an impressive number of "keepers." For once, Sony is to be commended for their coding, at least in this feature of the HX1, quite in contradistinction to their coding elsewise, such as their intractable bumbling in noise reduction.
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Jerry (Gerald L. Stevens)

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