The violin strings show a slight moire pattern, which is typical of many digicams. Noise is moderately high throughout the image, with a brighter grain pattern than in the other test images. Overall, we would have rated the 315 quite highly for it's handling of this shot, but the tonal breaks drop its performance considerably. The table below shows our standard resolution and quality series. Details appear very soft and we noticed the same splotchy color gradation in the high contrast areas.
Color balance looks pretty good, and noise is moderately high in the gray background.
Interestingly, the image details sharpen with the flash exposure, possibly due to the slightly higher contrast of the image, or to the use of a smaller lens aperture. The 315's automatic white balance system does a great job with this shot, producing a nice white value on the mini-resolution target. We did pick up a few slight magenta tints throughout the image, but overall color balance looks pretty good. We noticed a small halo around the outer edges of some of the brighter blocks, which seems to be a typical digicam response to the contrasting colors, and a more pixelated effect around the large red color block. The tonal gradations of the smaller, vertical gray scales also look good, though the darkest two blocks appear as a single tone.