Customer Reviews: Read 130 more reviews...
  Decent camera but we're buying another one September 13, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
My wife and I bought this camera for travel and family photos. It may be that we just haven't figured out how to determine what settings are necessary but picture quality is not consistent. Landscape shots seem to be very nice even though we would like to have more zoom than 3x. Indoor shots have never turned out well for us. Very difficult to capture moving shots and some shots seem to have a lot of noise, especially in ISO setting. Camera is fairly intuitive and I love the size of it. But we're looking for a different camera after 3 years because we just can't take the bad pictures anymore.
Pros:
Size
Look
Battery life
Quick start-up
Good landscape shots
Cons:
Inconsistent picture quality
Poor indoor shots
Slow shut-down
Nice outdoor, daylight pictures. Otherwise, hit or miss July 25, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I bought this camera from a large retail chain about 3 years ago (yes, the model is that old). First thing I must say: The price here is ridiculous for this camera. Its not worth $388, or whatever they have it listed for. That said, onto the pros and cons:
PROS
- Takes EXCELLENT pictures in any type of daylight (even mostly cloudy skies), including beautiful sunrise and sunset pictures (so long as its not too far along). Great clarity, excellent color, and wonderful balance. Can't beat this camera there.
- The movie setting is quite good. Not HD, but it doesn't have a limit on the video length (like many point-and-shoots do). If you have the memory, you can take as long a video as you want.
On that same note, the mic on this is actually quite good! Excellent for recording convos or even concerts (as long as you aren't standing right in front of the speakers).
- The camera does have a lot of settings, and the ability to create a 'custom' setting too by moving around ISO, flash, zoom, balance, and other settings.
- Macro mode is nice for up close shots
- The battery lasts FOREVER! On one charge, I've gotten 250 pics and a couple 2 minute videos while using the preview screen quite generously (still had some life too). Use a couple of the power save options, and I have no doubts you could easily hit 350-400 pictures on one charge.
- Turn it on, and a second later you can take a picture. Another second, and you can take another picture. Very quick turnaround.
- ISO setting isn't terrible (not great either) at taking low light pics w/o flash. Pics tend to be grainy though.
- Great, clear lens and a decent optical zoom (the digital zoom is fine, but I find using it tends to make it difficult to get a non-blurry shot).
CONS
- The root of many of this camera's problems: NO image stabilization feature! Be prepared to delete or re-take half of your pictures because of this, unless you have nerve and stability of an army sniper. W/o the flash in anything but direct sunlight, you are in trouble. Even with the flash, you need to hold the camera as still as possible. This wouldn't be as a big an issue, but...
- The 2.5 inch LCD is decent sized, but its difficult to see how good the picture actually is UNTIL you see it on your computer. So, you may take 10 pictures and think you have 10 winners, but turns out only 2 or 3 are keepers.
- The click/rotating wheel that has chooses one of the 10 modes of the camera is very easily turned by accident. Thus, you get the perfect shot, click the shutter...and find out that the camera was actually on video mode. Shot missed. Disappointment abounds.
- These 10 functions are also...shall we say...questionable as to there actual operation. Let me say this: Out of the 10 modes, I use just 3 of them (Auto, Landscape, and Video) 98% of the time. The others are pretty specific to certain scenarios, and I question if a couple of them actually do anything special (one setting is for beach shots, and it reportedly 'accentuates' the blue color. Compared to an auto beach shot, I can see no difference between the two).
- The flash has a 'groove zone', which I have found is about 4 to 6 feet away. Anywhere outside of that zone, and the flash does not perform as well. Closer and people look like they are bio-luminescent. Further away, and things start getting shadowy. There's also no options to change the flash intensity (fill, close, etc). So, you get the same flash each time. Red Eye is tough to avoid too. The flash indicator/RE light helps SOMETIMES (70% of the time), but the slow-synchro flash option is only effective maybe 15% of the time.
- Taking shots at night is the worst. Blurry without the flash, and the flash is usually too weak to make the shot look good regardless. The 'twilight modes' are also useless, as the lack of image stabilization comes back into play.
- Small quips: In video mode, you can't zoom at all while recording. You can only stop, zoom, and restart. Settings and features are not intuitive, but a quick read of the manual usually suffices. Cyber-shot software is awful. It runs EXTREMELY slow, doesn't offer many features compared to EasyShare, and its red eye fix (arguably the most used aspect of basic editing software) makes eyes look gray, dead, and unnatural.
This camera isn't bad, and has some nice features. However, image stabilization, IMO, is the reason why this camera isn't recommended.
 Good camera, resistant and long lasting battery July 20, 2008
I bought this camera through amazon.com two years ago, and I still use it a lot. I bought a more advanced model of the panasonic lumix one because I wanted to try a different brand (nothing really bad ever happened to this one, I just wanted a newer one). It is indeed a good camera, and I took amazing pictures of it, plus the videos. It comes with a built in mic, which is good, and the battery runs out pretty slow, which is great. I cant remember how many times I may have dropped it and it is still sturdy and fine. The pictures come out good, except when there is very little lights, then, it may get blurry. The other con is that even though it says it corrects red eyes, it never did the job well, but I dont know if that is common or not with other brands too (also, I like altering the pictures myself, so the red eyes ain't that big of a deal, I would say).
It is definitely NOT the best camera in the world, but if you're looking for something practical, small and handy, this one can be the one. The 7.2 MP model sold much more, and it is the exact same camera with a bit more definition.
Great camera... July 15, 2008
Takes good pictures, wasn't horribly expensive. I got this for my girlfriend a year ago and so far she has loved it. The rolling wheel menu is a really cool feature. If you're going for a compact digital I highly recommend the Sony ones in general along with Canon. Both are excellent. This one hasn't let down.
Lots of problems July 14, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
We've had this camera for almost 3 years. This is an okay camera. It takes good pictures outdoors, indoors are okay. Macro function is pretty useless. All those pictures come out blurry. If you use the flash the pics come out with major red eye and washed out. We've had some problems with this camera though. This is our second one, Sony had to replace the first one (can't remember why though). This second one had to be sent in to them to be repaired. The flash stopped working properly. All the pictures would come out brown unless you had the flash off. That was about a year ago. Now over the last few months a new problem has arose. The piece that holds the USB cable has become unstable. When you connect it to your computer you have to hold the cable and camera together and keep your hand perfectly still. If you move, it loses the connection with the computer. Today it's not connecting at all, no matter how still I hold it. I'm really surprised that this camera isn't better made considering it's from Sony. I don't think I'll buy a Sony camera again.
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