A few months ago, Sony announced two compact cameras incorporating its new backlight sensor, the Exmor R. These are cibershot TX1 (380 €) and cibershot WX1 (350 €) that with this sensor, offering new features in terms of shutter speed and noise control ISOS high. I had occasion to test a few days Sony cibershot WX1 and although I will not do a thorough analysis of the possibilities of the camera, if I thought it interesting to note the results offered the Exmor sensor R.

Both cameras incorporate the Exmor sensor R, are compact models with a resolution of 10.2 megapixels. The particularity of this sensor is that it has exchanged the position of the elements of its internal structure, allowing better use of light. Thus, in a conventional sensor, the light passes through the microlenses, passes through color filters and then crosses the interconnect layer, which blocks some of the light before it reaches the photodiodes where the photons are collected. In contrast, in a backlight sensor, Exmor as R, the light shines directly on the photodiodes, having gone through the filters, leaving the wiring layer underneath and thus not interrupting the light.

To get more light to the photodiodes, it is normal to ISOS high performance look better, getting a lower noise level.

In addition, the combination of this sensor with Bionz processor allows gusts up to 10 frames per second, which Sony has used to implement two interesting new features, which are where I focused on this test:

• Twilight function further reduces the noise of a sack, making a flurry of high-speed six photos on a stationary subject, and averaged. Since noise is random in nature, making the average of the six pictures you'll get a picture with 1 / 6 of the original noise, and all done automatically and instantly by the camera.
• Panorama Sweep function takes the shutter speed to make automatic panoramas (up to 256 degrees in the WX1 or 185 º in the TX1), firing a blast while the camera is rotated.

To test the function Twilight, I photographed the scene of the picture, in which the only light was from two candles. I repeated the same photo to all available ISOS and finally, with the function Twilight. Upon activation, the camera automatically adjusts ISO 400 and with one touch on the trigger causes a burst of six pictures. The result can be seen in the reflection of a cut of the sails. Even at ISO 1600 the camera offers a very decent result, but with Twilight the noise disappears, giving a picture similar to that made with the minimum ISO (160).

Sweep function for Panorama nothing better than to go out and do some views, although not of much value as photos, if they will serve to verify the quality of joints.

But how is the sequence of pictures that do? A third pan, following the movement of a car, help us to see how much overlap the pictures. The following image is just a snip of a piece of the panorama.