Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W290 12 MP Digital Camera with 5x Optical Zoom and Super Steady Shot Image Stabilization (Dark Blue)

I bought originally a Sony DSC-S950 for about half the price of this camera, but I returned the same day due to a faulty flash bulb. I decided to upgrade to the W290, because I was not very happy with the S950 - it felt cheap, and missing features.

I've assembled this list of pros and cons of this camera. Do not let the seemingly long list of cons scare you, because they are all very small and not important enough for me to judge this camera is slightly less than 5 stars. I felt it was necessary to list everything I could think of. Unfortunately I could not really read the HD video function because I do not have HD cables (see below) and my computer seems to be too slow to properly play HD video.

Advantages:

-Brilliant color! I am very impressed by the colors in my photos, especially when shooting outdoor landscape shots (which is primarily what I bought this camera).

-Night-time shot using a tripod, turn out very well also to provide as much detail as you could see with their naked eye.

-Smile Shutter, as mentioned in previous reviews, works perfectly. One thing that does not seem to be mentioned anywhere, is that in Smile Shutter mode will continue to take pictures automatically as long as it keeps detecting smile, which is very cool. So if you take a group picture, and you're one of those people who likes to take three pictures of the same "just in case", just keep smiling and your camera will take care of it for you.

-There is a 3-shot burst mode where it automatically takes three images when you click the button: one with your usual EV, an at-1EV, and one at an EV (or different intervals, even if you choose). That once in a lifetime shot you take will have three different versions automatically, and you can select the one you like best and delete the rest later.

-The Intelligent Auto mode works well, it takes a lot of excitement from the ceiling, pressing the pictures. The only time I do not use it when I have plenty of time to plan for a shot.

-Start time is fantastic! I have seen other complaints from people who say that this camera takes too long to start and be ready for use, but these people must be the most impatient people ever, because this is faster than any other camera I've owned, digitally or otherwise. When you click the power button, fires out fast lens and the screen immediately displays the image, and is ready for action. Probably takes about 0.5 seconds from pressing the button to be ready for use.


Cons:

-The plastic on the LCD screen stand out from the camera body, making it easier scratched. I would recommend getting some screen protectors, as I am about to do.

The plug-in, all-in-one cable is in the bottom of the camera, it will be great when a dock is available, but in the meantime it is a very difficult place to plug in the cable. It forces you to put the camera on either the lens or the LCD side (as mentioned above are designed in such a way that it could be scratched fairly easily without a screen protector)

-Not 't come with HD video cables, just the typical yellow / red / white RCA analog cables. To see how this camera records HD video, it would be nice to play it in HD on my TV without burning it to a DVD first. You can buy the HD cables from Sony, if you really need them, however.

-Comes with a NP-BG1 battery, turn off the camera's ability to show you the remaining minutes. You must purchase the optional NP-FG1 battery to see it. It is the only difference being that both batteries have the same capacity. It was obviously designed that way to force us to buy an extra battery ... but that was fine with me as I planned on buying one anyway.


I would definitely recommend this camera to anyone looking for a high quality point-and-shoot digital camera!

Sony DSC-TX7 10.2MP CMOS Digital Camera with 4x Zoom with Optical Steady Shot Image Stabilization and 3.5 inch Touch Screen LCD (Blue)

I have had my Sony DSC-TX7 from Amazon a few days ago. First impression - it is very small and thin. Feels very solid and a dark blue color looks pretty good. A bracelet that is already fixed at the factory, otherwise it can easily slip out of hands. It's pretty good for a party - you can put it in your pocket and do what you want, even dance, and this camera will not annoy you with their presence.

Advantages:

- Very attractive stylish and robust design, especially in dark blue color
- Ultra-slim body fits all small pocket
- Dust free lens when the lens is not preferable
- Big high resolution 920k colorful screen looks like a small TV
- Fairly fast startup time, no shutter layer, up to 10 frames per second in burst mode
- Accepts SD / SDHC memory cards and Sony's proprietary Memory Stick
- Wide 25mm (equivalent) lens - great for indoor and festivities
- High-precision autofocus and effective image stabilization
- Sophisticated noise reduction algorithm improves the high ISO image quality
- Advanced Handheld Twilight mode for low-light images
- Special Lens Correction HDR mode for scenes with high contrast
- Wide auto-stitches panorama mode
- High quality front-side stereo microphones
- Smooth and quiet zoom lens, autofocus and optical image stabilization
- Very nice Full HD 1080 60i video
- Unusually good video quality and high sensitivity in VGA mode
- Intuitive thought out menu with user-friendly touch-screen

Cons:

- New "Exmor R" sensor works much faster, but noisier than CCD them
- Aggressive noise reduction tends to obliterate small picture details
- Relatively short battery life and slow charger

CONSTRUCTION: The build quality is very good and I usually like his design. The only problem is the displacement of the lens cover to turn the camera off and on - this mechanism is pretty tight, but the lens cover does not have any kind of performance you can understand the move, to push the shield up and down.

Program Start: Start time is quite short - about 1 sec. The timing of the recording of a single image to the memory card can vary from 1 to 2 seconds without flash and about 2 seconds with flash. In burst mode, you take 10 shots for only 1 second, but then you wait about 10 seconds while they are writing to memory. The menu offers an interface to manage groups of shots.

DISPLAY:. TX7 has a large 3.5 "bright high resolution screen with 920k pixels and a wide viewing angle, which is easy to see even in direct sunlight with its vivid colors and clarity, it looks like a small TV with a 16:9 wide screen - the screen.

MENU: Most camera functions are accessible via the touch screen. TX7 has a very intuitive menu that is visually divided into three parts - a narrow left and right vertical stripes and a large central area. At the top of the right bar you can see the indicator of remaining battery charge, available number of shots, current shooting format and resolution. In the lower part there are two buttons: shooting modes and playback. If you press the MODE button a list of available functions is displayed in the central part: Intelligent Auto, Program Auto, iSweep Panorama, Movie, Anti Blur Motion, Handheld Twilight, backlight compensation and HDR scenes.

The left navigation bar has a "Menu" button on the top with four predefined icons below. It is touching to "Menu" button on the central area will display icons for the parameters along with the left bar represents them all available shooting characteristics of the selected recording mode.

The most interesting is that if you press the gear icon at the top, so you can drag your finger to any of the four icons from left bar in the middle of the central screen area and drop it there. And then you can move all the available icon from the central area and in the same way, move it to the empty space on the left bar. By doing this you can customize the quick access menu separately for individual recording modes as you need (make sure to move firmly and move slowly). And in the same way that you can choose them quick access icons for playback, too.

Advanced Features: TX7 has a number of advanced features that can be useful in tricky lighting conditions.

THH: "Twilight Hand-held" mode may help to either improve the low light image quality when using a flash is prohibited or get a picture in so challenging lighting conditions, where else can you get any at all. In this mode the camera automatically sets the lowest possible ISO and shutter speed, taking six shots in about 1 sec and then combine them into one image with much less noise. It can be very useful for shooting landscapes at dusk, in the interior, or pieces of museum. Taking pictures of people with this condition may be better to tell them "freeze!" instead of "cheers!" :-)

AMB: "Anti Motion Blur" is another dim light that also takes a number of successive images and then compose their superposition. Unlike THH mode has a set of high ISO and fast shutter speed to capture the issues that can be slightly moved by pets or children. For example, shutter speed 1 / 30, if for some indoors in THH mode the camera can set the ISO 200 and then the AMB can be set to ISO-3200 and 1 / 200 BTW, in some cases I saw images of THH state was a kind of underexposed and oversaturated with a little red or blue tint, so I had to use some exposure compensation when shooting - about 1.0 to 1.3, and also to do some work to adjust the white balance. In fact, both modes use a noise reduction mechanism based on data averages. The cornerstone of this mechanism is that useful data is constant - no change from a series of shots to another, while the sound is varied. So algorithm when making images superposition amplifier constant aspects and reduces random them.

Treatment assignments in THH-mode is quite simple: the algorithm should recognize shifting of each successive shots caused by unstable hands and then compensate for it while holding pictures superposition. But in the AMB-mode in addition to shaking hands instability camera must also identify the issues that move by themselves (like children or pets). For static fields AMB algorithm can be applied, since the average noise reduction in THH-mode, but moving in the AMB algorithm should try to identify their course and keep them separate to reduce their noise. About AMB algorithm can dynamically adjust them, so it takes a picture of this movement from one of these pictures and just present it without noise reduction (the worst case scenario). This can happen if the subject moves too much, or if its form is changing, for example - a jumping dog. I did some testing and found - the smaller the subject moves, the better AMB algorithm can perform their duties, and so less noise is visible in the final image.

HDR: "Backlight Correction HDR" - a more useful way. It is not just a lens, but it can also be very useful in all cases, when the image is composed of fragments with very different brightness. The camera, the two shots in quick succession, each of which is optimized for the lightest and darkest areas and then combining them both in one shot. This mode is only effective when there is a huge difference in the areas of "luminance. The good news is that even in the previous models (like my old DSC-T100), and even ordinary images, Sony has done a pretty good job of expanding the dynamic range. I did not know until about two years ago I bought an advanced Kodak P & S camera, and found that the same issues with the Kodak camera completely washed a little more lit areas, Sony's T100 was made to handle them quite well! The same applies for TX7 also.

Panorama: Another interesting feature is iSweep Panorama mode. You can shoot either a horizontal or vertical panorama, and there are two modes: standard and wide. A standard horizontal panorama can cover up to 180 degrees (or less), while the wide, you can shoot almost the entire circle. Just remember: you must take your horizontal panorama in 10 sec. A standard vertical panorama covers about 130 degrees and the broad one - about 180 degrees, and you must finish it within about 8 seconds. Be aware that zoom does not work in this mode and recording in the most wide-angle (25mm equivalent focal length). The resulting horizontal panorama is not of good quality - it has only 1080 pixels of vertical resolution. If your item does not fit the picture, or if you want better resolution, you can do this trick: 1) to switch to the vertical up-to-the panoramic, 2) Select the general one, 3) turn your camera 90 degrees counterclockwise and shoot your panorama from left to right within 8 sec. In this case you will have 1920 pixels vertically. Another tip: Before you start with a panoramic view point your camera at an object that is on the average distance, and half press the shutter button to capture the right focus. Then hold the button half pressed rotated to the most left position, press the button all the way down and start shooting. This is important because if you start in your direction, there is no object, which is much closer than most of the objects in the panorama you where you want to catch a wrong focus, and most of the panorama would be blurred.

Sony DSC-W350 14.1MP Digital Camera with 4x Wide Angle Zoom with Optical Steady Shot Image Stabilization and 2.7 inch LCD (Blue)

I wanted a camera that I could slip into my pocket and not feel as if it were there - the Sony 350 does. I would clear quality pictures to capture all the quality of the colors - Sony 350 does.

I have three great Canon digital cameras that cost thousands of dollars. They work well - but they will not fit in my pocket - and I tried a small but high quality camera. I spent a year talking to others who had large digital cameras, ask them if they owned a small pocket one - the overall response was a Cybershot. No matter which model they had, they were all very pleased with the Cybershot. The Cybershot has the lenses are made of a German engineering firm. No other pocket-size camera are of such quality.

So the question for me was the model, and it took four months debate. I am satisfied with the Sony DSC-W350, I would buy it again. Indeed, it has more features (image, video, etc.) than what I was looking for and I can never use the video function because I'm primarily a snapshot shooter.

I want to talk on camera below, but just want to say three quick things, if you decide to buy this camera. The first need 8 hours to charge the battery. The internal memory is very small - use the money for a larger size memory. I bought 8 GB - which I had bought the 16 GB as a journey is not always possible to download images to a laptop or computer. If you are good at figuring out electronics (or owned a digital camera before - the six page book, and your power is sufficient to launch straight into a turn). If you need more information - you need to load the disc to the full documentation. I went on a trip two days after the camera came up and could use it just fine without the full manual, but when I turned around I dug into the manual to find answers to all my many questions.

I would buy Cyber ​​Shot through Costco (yes, between Costco and Amazon are up 96% of our household purchases - we also bought lawnmowers from Amazon). But by not having to pay VAT on Amazon, I could take this money and use them against an 8 GB memory.

This is not a big negative, but I will mention it. The digital standard (higher-quality cameras) can capture an image directly into the sun. There are times when you have no choice to move around - as a vessel or other enclosed spaces. The sun washes out any idea you have in the viewfinder with Sony 350th None of Cyber ​​Shots can do this. And from my research, I learned not to any pocket cameras that could. Again, you can not have everything in one pocket-sized camera. It's not a big problem, but if you use to take pictures of the sun (if you own a higher quality camera), do not be disappointed when you can not with the Cyber-Shot.

With my big Canon cameras I very rarely use a flash in low light and because of the camera's ability to photos is fantastic. Sony 350 has the ability to take pictures of all the flash setting, and take high quality images with dim light. You can not have everything, but with a camera that can slip into your pocket. (Sony 350 has a quick button to click the flash on and off.)

When I go on tour (but age 63) I can still make the trip into an experience that I was in college. I also run full and half marathon. I wanted a camera that I could take with me when sometimes a bigger camera would not work. Sony arrived a day before I went to New York City Half Marathon. I bought the Sony 350 to carry with me in this contest. Yes, it is so small, it can fit in your fist. It was covered with sweat, but still took good pictures and had no problems later with sweat on the camera and the camera works well. The camera was passed around to other running in my group, so we are all part went in to enjoy the images of each other. I could not have done it with one of my bigger cameras.

I took Cybershot (along with a Canon) with me on a camping trip to Alaska in early spring - still below freezing with snow everywhere. I gave the Sony 350 to the other person, and they had so much fun to take pictures on their own. The other person has never owned a camera still took great pictures - it is the quality of this camera. We camped at the base camp of Mt. Mc Kinley (or Denali) and Sony have in the snow often - never bothered camera's ability to continue to function.

I leave the Sony 350 in my car, so it is easily accessible. It is so small that it can easily be stored in many places not visible to someone looking in the car. There have been many times over the many years I wish I had a camera with me to take pictures when I had not planned to do so. Oh, I have a camera on my cell, but the quality (as we all know) is limited. Sony 350 is small and takes the pictures I want.

I will always take the Sony 350 with me on trips with my bigger Canon cameras. I can keep the Sony 350 in your pocket all the time, and captured many candid pictures that I could have done with Canon, because everyone would know I was in the picture taking mood with a better camera. Sony is also very easy to use, and people will now say - let me take a picture of you. They will not do that with my larger cameras - they were too intimidated by the larger camera (full of buttons and switches on the Canon).

I would buy Cybershot again. My only regret is that I should have bought it a year earlier to have a lot to take in the fun by having a camera pocket.

Sony DSC-W350 14.1MP Digital Camera with 4x Wide Angle Zoom with Optical Steady Shot Image Stabilization and 2.7 inch LCD (Black)

I was looking for a small camera to keep with me when I do not want to lug my big and heavy pro-class DSLR, and I think that Sony usually works for me pretty well. It is easy to use and relatively high performance for a compact point and shoot camera and can produce good pictures under a variety of conditions, when used properly.

I usually take my camera shopping pay close attention to the lens, and Sony comes with a Carl-Zeiss 4x zoom lens, angled toward the wide angle end of the spectrum. I support generally smaller zoom range if it means getting a better picture quality, and it is precisely the approach Sony gear. Yes, you can get 5x - even 10x - zoom camera like this, but in my experience that the sacrifice in image quality is not worth it. Sony 4x usually mean I get quite stable lens performance in a useful zoom range. To be clear, beats any DSLR with a good quality lens on the pants the little lens on this type of compact camera, but it is the type of animal ... Also, if I do something where best performance is a requirement, with my heavy DSLR and lenses that cost ten times what this Sony does - it is not the task I have in mind for Sony anyway.

The 14.1MP sensor seems to be of high quality, as long as you use the camera for good and even lighting. How the camera games are somewhat low light (high ISO), or where there is considerable dynamic range (difference between the lightest and darkest parts of an image). In good conditions - bright and evenly lit - the sensor provides excellent detail, certainly far more than enough for email, web or print up to maybe A3 (13x19cm cm). Yet during the more challenging lighting, will Sony be a bit disappointing ... where a large DSLR can capture detail in highlights and shadows, Sony tends to blow out highlights or shadows will turn into a sea of ​​black. Again, this is really normal for cameras with small image sensors - Sony performance is really good considering the small form factor and product prices.

The camera's built-in software is also very good and helps to capture lots of details, even if the images are compressed to a manageable size JPG files. In Photoshop, I compared the Sony-compressed image to a similar image taken by a professional quality DSLR, and there are few if any differences due to image processing. Noise reduction and sharpness are handled well and there are few digital artifacts are visible. This is truly the best results I've seen for a camera in this price range.

Regarding design quality, the camera is solid and seems well built. Most controls are simple to use and you do not get that feeling of "fight" against it. The 2.7 "LCD screen is sharp and easy to use, although it may be difficult in bright sunlight or for those like me with aging eyes, struggling with small text on the screen. Performance is generally fast and do not wait for camera to figure out what to do next. The camera is small, and one thing that helps me is Sony's well-designed image stabilization function. I usually have difficulty with small cameras and stable image stabilization helps me to get sharp pictures under most conditions.

Sony adds a host of smart features like Panorama Shooting, which allows you to take multiple images of a scene and then have them "stitched" together in the camera for a wide panoramic view. I have similar programs in Photoshop to do this, but it's cool to see it implemented in the camera. Sony also provides a useful HDR (High Dynamic Range) capability of the camera, giving you a way to deal with some otherwise difficult scenes. Both these features make up for the camera's limitations, such as low dynamic range capability of small sensors and the limited zoom range. Sony makes it easy to upload pictures and videos to popular sharing sites, you save a few steps away from doing this on your computer.

The camera can also record HD (720p) video at up to half an hour long. I rarely use this feature, so other than to say it works, I'll leave that one to the other reviewers.

I was considering several other options from Nikon, Canon, Pentax, and also the new Leica X1. I like the Nikon, since the software and menus are the same as my DSLR (a Nikon too). Canon seems to give slightly better picture quality. I've owned several Pentax point-and-shoot digital cameras and found them sturdy and durable. And of course, is the Leica in a class by itself when it comes to quality. Still, while all of these competitors offer unique advantages, it seemed that total package of price and service to be the best with Sony - at least today.

Overall, given the price I am satisfied with the Sony DSC-W350 and would recommend it to anyone who wants a cheap, easy to use digital camera that delivers good quality images under various conditions.