Our first sample image was taken on a very bright day with the T70 zoomed-out to wide angle and set to its lowest 80 ISO sensitivity. As such this represents perfect conditions. The T70’s widest equivalent coverage is just 38mm, which meant we had to stand back further than normal for this shot. The crops contain a decent amount of detail as you’d hope, but look really closely and you’ll see some undesirable image processing artefacts which sadly crop up increasingly over its sensitivity range.

Landscape: 2.12MB, Program, 1/250, f7.1, ISO 100, 6.33-19mm at 19mm (equivalent to 114mm)

						Another shot taken on a sunny day, but this time with the T70 zoomed-in and set to a slightly higher sensitivity of 100 ISO. From a distance and on normal-sized prints, the image looks fine, but examine closely at 100% on-screen and you’ll see image processing and compression artefacts rendering ultimate detail into somewhat fuzzy patches at times.

Landscape: 2.10MB, Program, 1/10, f3.5, ISO 100, 6.33-19mm at 6.33mm (equivalent to 38mm)

If you compare this composition with our other compact galleries, you’ll see how the 38mm equivalent wide angle doesn’t capture anywhere as big a view from the same distance as those with 28mm coverage.

The crops are reasonably detailed though and only dedicated pixel peepers will notice any noise.

In these bright conditions, the T70 automatically selected an aperture of f7.1 which isn’t as open as the lens can go – as such the background isn’t particularly blurred.

The crops are also revealing the impact of greater image processing, smearing fine details.

The subject matter here has done a reasonable job of hiding any detrimental effects of increasing the ISO and the crops contain a good amount of detail.

Another shot at 400 ISO, this time taken in dimmer indoor lighting conditions.

Look closely at the crops and you’ll see evidence of Sony’s now recognisable image processing artefacts: there is detail remaining, but many areas with similar colours and textures have become heavily smeared.

Of course if you’re printing at smaller sizes or not looking too closely, you won’t notice it too much, but pixel peepers will be bothered.

Rather worryingly, we also found the Super SteadyShot anti-shake system was right up against its capabilities here, with this being the best result from a selection which mostly suffered from blur.

This could be down to the system’s effectiveness, but equally the longer focal length (even when zoomed-out) compared to many rivals will have an impact.

Interestingly the heavy-handed processing has eliminated much of the noise, but equally taken detail away with it too.

We saw a similar effect with the Sony H9, with the company applying rather too much noise reduction and compression than we’d like – especially without the opportunity to adjust it.