the Extreme cam I tested in FVM

[tom hardwick]

The lens in the little water-proof Extreme cam I tested in this month's FVM does barrel distort quite considerably. It's not surprising as it sees a staggeringly wide 170 degrees. Barrel distortion bends straight lines, and the further these lines are from the centre of the picture, the more they're bent. Also, lines that pass through the centre of the picture are not distorted at all, as this shot taken in a train beautifully demonstrates.

[tom hardwick]

Here's another Extreme cam shot that hides the huge barrel distortion - because who knows how straight the car's A pillars were to start with? This was auto exposure, and remember there's no delayed action, I'm pressing the shutter button on this shot. Pretty good for tight spaces.

[TimStannard]

Wouldn't give you tuppence for the car shot (though nothing to do with the barrel distortion), but the train carriage shot is superb.
Where's my Mastercard ... oh damn, Mrs Tim's hiding it again.

[Chrisbitz]

the in car shot looks very grainy, but the train shot looks amazing - is there a reason or was it just available light?

[tom hardwick]

Far less light in the car, so the camera ups the gain. When it reaches 400 ISO it starts to slow the shutter speed, and you have no control over either parameter - though you can vary the exposure +/- 2 stops in third stop increments. The files I've uploaded are tiny vs the originals of course 4078 kb is reduced to the 561 kb you see here, so there's a lot of compression going on.

Here's a completely un-retouched shot - the only difference is that the original is 10 times the size so is slightly less noisy, less blocky and sharper. But this is shot in fully auto mode and shows how well the little Extreme cam handles contrast, and at the same time how wide and wonderful are its views in rooms even when shooting at maximum aperture.