Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W100

Color (8.12)
The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W100 has plenty of controls to tweak the colors. It has six white balance settings and three color modes: Natural, Normal, and Vivid. The Normal mode is what Sony deems its most accurate color offering and is the default of the W100. We tested the camera in all of its color modes, but the Normal mode was truly the most realistic. Thus, we used the Normal mode to photograph the GretagMacbeth color chart. The chart is shown below, although it has been modified by Imatest Imaging Software to show the difference between the chart’s ideal colors and those produced by the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W100. The inner vertical rectangle shows the ideal, while the outer square depicts what the W100 captured. The central square shows the ideal color corrected for luminance.

Imatest software analyzed the camera’s colors and output the following chart, which describes the relationships between the W100’s colors and those of the original GretagMacbeth chart. The ideal colors are pictured as squares, while the Sony W100’s colors are shown as circles.

Most of the colors are extremely accurate with the squares and circles remaining fairly close to one another. This digital camera’s colors have a 5.99 mean color error, which is much better than the Sony W30’s 6.58 mean color error. That camera received a 7.61 overall color score while the Cyber-shot W100 scored a respectable 8.12.

The W100’s Normal color mode produced the most accurate results and over-saturated colors by only 1.4 percent. The Natural mode produced dull colors that were only about 82 percent saturated. The Vivid mode over-saturated by about 10 percent, which is about how much typical compact digital cameras over-saturate anyway. Overall, the Sony W100 performed very well and reproduced realistic colors with room for experimentation.

Still Life Scene
Below are three shots of our beloved still life scene, recorded with the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W100 in each of its color modes. Click on any of the images to view the full resolution versions.

Normal Color Mode

Natural Color Mode

Vivid Color Mode

Resolution (4.59)
As the flagship of the W-series, the Sony W100 has the most megapixels on its sensor of any of the W-series digital cameras. It has a 1/1.8-inch Super HAD CCD with 8.1 megapixels packed onto it. To see how effective the camera is at capturing full-resolution shots, we did just that using an industry standard resolution test chart (pictured below).

Click on the chart to view a full resolution version

Imatest analyzed the many images we took and determined that the sharpest shot was taken using a focal length of 18.7 mm and an aperture of f/4.5. The software program also determined the sharpness of the shot in terms of line widths per picture height (lw/ph), which is a theoretical measurement of how many alternating black and white lines can fit across the frame in horizontal and vertical directions.

Horizontally, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W100 can resolve 1856 lw/ph while over-sharpening by 10.8 percent. Vertically, it can read 1310 lw/ph while under-sharpening by 5.29 percent. This isn’t incredibly impressive, especially for a digital camera that advertises 8.1 megapixels. Still, a look at the resolution shot shows a clear picture from edge to edge – although there is some fringing around edges. For this, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W100 earned a 4.59 overall resolution score.

Noise – Auto ISO (8.05)
The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W100 metered the scene appropriately and automatically set the ISO to the lowest option: 80. Because there is little noise at this setting, the camera received an excellent overall automatic ISO noise score of 8.05. This is far better than the W30, which metered and set to a much noisier ISO 380 setting in the same lighting conditions.

Noise – Manual ISO (8.24)
The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W100 has the widest ISO range of any of the W-series digital cameras. Its manual ISO settings include the following: 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, and 1250. Sony uses Clear RAW technology to keep noise levels low. We tested each manual ISO setting to validate this. The results are shown on the chart below: the ISO settings are on the horizontal axis and the noise levels are on the vertical axis.

The slope of the noise level is very steady across the entire range, which isn’t entirely common as most compact models have huge jumps in noise beyond ISO 400. The Sony W100 performed very well, earning an overall manual ISO noise score of 8.24. The small camera keeps noise to a minimum even with a wide ISO range.

Low Light (7.0)
In case W100 photographers are stuck shooting in a dark alley, we tested its ability to snap shots in low light without the use of the flash. Our testing consists of photographing the color chart as a target in decreasing lighting conditions of 60, 30, 15, and 5 lux. The 60 lux test is roughly equivalent to two soft lamps in a dark alley. The 30 lux test is like having a single 40-watt bulb lit in the alley. The 30 and 15 lux tests are quite dark and aren’t conditions photographers will likely shoot in, but we test the camera at these levels to get a sense of any limitations the image sensor may have. Using an ISO sensitivity of 1250 and an aperture of f/4.5, we tested the Sony W100 at these levels.


The images aren’t incredibly sharp, but they are illuminated quite well – much better than the Sony W30. The four different tests used progressively longer shutter speeds as the light dims. Colors became increasingly discolored and over-saturated the longer the shutter remained open. Below is a chart showing how the exposure time affected the noise levels. The shutter speeds are shown across the horizontal axis with the noise on the vertical axis.

The noise jumps slightly from each test, with the 30-second shutter speed at 5 lux recording the most noise. Still, the amount of noise during the darkest test on the Sony W100 is better than any of the tests on the Sony W30. Overall, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W100 produced decent shots in low light. The picture remains illuminated, but the colors suffer and the noise increases as the shutter speed lengthens.

Dynamic Range (6.5)
Our Dynamic Range test measures the span between the brightest and darkest subjects that a camera can simultaneously render properly. It's important for a camera to show detail in both the brightest and darkest areas of a subject. The typical bride and groom are a familiar subject that is often challenging. If a camera has poor dynamic range, the bride's white gown will be reduced to a featureless white blob, and the groom's tux will be a Stygian expanse of black. Cameras with better dynamic range will show detail on both – the lace on the gown, and the creases on the groom's sleeve.

We use a standardized test to measure each camera's capacity for dynamic range. The results show the camera's maximum range at each ISO. It is unlikely that shots of typical scenes will show as wide a range as the optimized test does, but the test results allow us to compare cameras on an equal basis. We photograph a Stouffer test target, which shows a row of progressively darker rectangles from left to right. Using Imatest software, we analyze images of the target to find how much dynamic range the camera has at high and low quality. Imatest defines High Quality as the range with no more than 1/10-EV of noise, and Low Quality as the range with no more than 1 stop of noise. Though the High Quality measure is more important, the Low Quality number is useful to indicate whether deep shadows and highlights will have texture – maybe not clear detail, but just a sense surface.

W100 - Dynamic Range - ISO 80

W100 - Dynamic Range - ISO 400

W100 - Dynamic Range - ISO 1250

The Sony W100 gives better than typical performance for a high-megapixel compact camera. We note particularly that the W100 performs better at ISO 800 than its lower-resolution sibling, the W30. The W100's ISO 1250 performance is better than the W30's performance at ISO 1000.

Speed / Timing
Start-up to First Shot (7.28)
The Sony W100 takes a good 2.5 seconds to start up, which is long, even for a compact camera that has to extend its lens. Many competing cameras do better. We expect that many W100 users will have some frustrating moments, waiting for the camera to get ready while a fleeting photo opportunity disappears during those 2.5 seconds.

Shot to Shot (7.78)
The Sony W100 is no speed demon in burst mode, either. In its normal burst, the W100 snapped just 1 image per second, and took only 4 images before pausing to write them to memory. It took more than 20 seconds for the camera to get ready for another shot. This speed is poor compared to competing cameras, which tend to manage 2.5 to 3 shots per second, and to write them to memory in about 10 or 12 seconds. The W100 also shoots in a multi-burst mode, recording 16 images in only 2 seconds. The images are only 1 megabyte, about twice the size of standard video.

Shutter to Shot (8.1)
The Sony W100 had an average shutter delay of 0.9 seconds – the longest we've tested in a while. Waiting nearly a full second from the time the shutter is pressed until the shot is taken will be inconvenient even for posed pictures of people, let alone candid or action shots. The problem is entirely in the focusing system – when we pre-focused the images, the W100 got the shot so fast, we couldn't measure the delay.