Sunday, February 26, 2012

F550EXR – Heat sensitivity?

The other day, I wrote a post showing that the F550EXR seems to have unusual blue channel sensitivity to the heat coming off of my new glass top range. The evidence was absolutely crystal clear that other cameras, including older EXR SCCD cameras, has no problems capturing the red elements as red.

A comment from “jim r-pdx” asked the question if other heat sources would also show this. So I shot a candle in the dark to see. Since the color of the light is on the orange side, even setting white balance to normal against the black candle base should leave things white, not blue.

But …

F550EXR  1600iso  f/3.5  1/13  +2ev

The tea light wax comes out looking about perfect. The black metal of the candle holder looks good. But what is that blue glow around the flame and the tea light? I suppose that’s the F550’s classic reaction to heat. How interesting …

Also note: I shot at +2EV to capture the shadows with really nice details. I relied upon the DR400 setting to save the flame for me and it did!

I don’t know about you, but that’s a pretty excellent performance for dynamic range compression in my book.