One buck Test

Imyaz Familik
DigiCamFriends.com

What it’s all about

What does an unsophisticated user take into consideration when buying a digital camera? Perhaps it’s the price that matters, then its size, appearance, the amount of megapixels and possibility of optical and digital approximation (the zoom function). And that would probably be all. If things are more or less clear with the first two criteria and you don’t have to be a photo guru to figure those out, it might not be that simple to estimate the other two characteristics. Yet it’s not the point.

Most modern digital cameras have widely variable range of camera settings adjustment including photosensitivity of matrix. Many cameras allow presetting very high film speed and it’s quite natural to shoot at ISO800 or ISO1600. But is it really that useful? Well it is since it saves you the trouble of using flash while shooting and helps catching good shots of moving objects. It does seem pretty cool unless you see the reverse side of the medal.

The higher the film speed is the more noise creeps in and appears as angular blocks in the image, which are known as artefacts; that also blanks out color gradation and changes halftones. Just like every food has its own flavor every matrix and every camera reacts differently. What are these reactions like? This is what my one buck test is all about!

How it works

The table contains test results of all cameras under my surveillance. It is important that equal conditions be observed while testing the cameras, i. e. artificial lighting with a ceiling-mounted lamp, a tripod and one buck of course. The operating mode can be named as semi-automatic, programmable or manual, but whatever you call it, it stands for the following: no longer totally automatic but with limited amount of adjustable settings. It’s mostly limited to flash intensity, expocorrection, white balance and photosensitivity settings. All of them except one remain unchanged: flash is off, no expocorrection applied, automatic white balance, but matrix photosensitivity successively changes in all possible diapasons. Distance between lens and the banknote is about 45 cm, zoom is deactivated.

The camera being fixed on the tripod, with a short delay to assure steadiness follows a snap of the shutter release button because any tester is just a human being and who knows what might have happened to him overnight. Let’s go!