Digital Photography in Available Light

essential skills: digital photography in available light

The Sony DSC-R1- a camera with an identity crisis or a new breed?

Large sensors in prosumer digicams

The quality that can be achieved with the Sony DSC-R1, unlike other prosumer cameras, is not

compromised by its sensor size. The larger CMOS sensor means that you can raise the ISO

comfortably to 400 without noise becoming a huge issue. Noise starts to become apparent at

around 800 ISO but can be suppressed reasonably effectively with Photoshop’s new ‘Reduce

Noise’ fi lter. At 1600 quality is unduly compromised and 3200 is just plain wishful thinking on Sony’s

part. In the test conducted in the studio the Sony R1 was able to take the prolonged exposures

(one second and over) in its stride but the results were not quite a match for the superior quality

captured by the Canon CMOS sensor used in the EOS 20D. Again it is important to note that these

differences in quality are only likely to be seen if the fi nal print size is large.

Larger sensors and increased dynamic range

Another advantage that any prosumer digicam equipped with a larger sensor will enjoy over other

prosumer digicams is the fact that larger sensors are able to record a broader dynamic range, i.e.

the ability of the sensor to record information in a high contrast scene. Add a white dress, a black

suit and a little sunshine and most digicams have met their match as the scene easily exceeds the

subject brightness range that most digicams can handle.

The S3 Pro uses the SuperCCD SR sensor that uses two

photodiodes located at each photosite. The ‘S’ pixel has

normal sensitivity whilst the ‘R’ pixel is smaller and captures

information beyond the range of the ‘S’ pixel, The camera’s

processor combines the information from the two photodiodes

to create an image fi le with an extended dynamic range

Using a DSLR to record the same high contrast scene has typically only been an advantage

when capturing in the RAW format and the photographer is skilled enough to be able to extract

the additional detail using the camera RAW interface (Fuji S3 excepted as it uses a specialized

‘SR’ sensor). Sony have admirably handled the issue of high subject contrast by implementing an

automatic gamma control in an attempt to pass on the advantages of the broader dynamic range

of a larger sensor to the JPEG fi le.