Ideal Digital Camera for Beginners

Author's Rating:

Pros: Beautiful pictures, wide array of settings, intuitive menu options.

Cons: A bit bulky in the hand, no protective case.

The Bottom Line: 
Beautiful photos in an easy-to-use camera. Uploads to a computer right out of the box. Excellent for beginners.

Author's Review
I'll try to keep this review simple for beginners because I believe this camera is best suited for those relatively new to digital photography.

3.2 MEGAPIXELS
The camera is listed at 3.2 megapixels, which is somewhere between good and great, but would not be considered top shelf. If you're a "normal" photographer that takes family photos, makes a photo album or two, and e-mails photos to family and friends, 3.2 megapixels is more than adequate for your needs. Professional photographers would want more, but professional photographers would be shopping for more expensive cameras. Note, however, that the camera actually takes pictures at 3.1 rather than the 3.2 internal capacity.

This is a gross overgeneralization, but the number of megapixels can be thought of as the size of the image. Everyone knows how a picture gets blurrier the more you enlarge or zoom in on it. Applying that to megapixels works roughly like this: you could take a 1 megapixel camera and take a beautiful, perfectly acceptable wallet-size photo. If you tried to blow up that photo to an 8 x 10 it would become quite blurry and basically look bad. Then, take the same picture with a 3.2 megapixel camera: it looks beautiful as an 8 x 10 because the image is much larger to begin with. And, if you want a wallet photo you can always make an image smaller without sacrificing clarity. So it's a one-way street: you can always start with a large (high megapixel) image and go down, but you cannot start with a small (low megapixel) image and go up. Make sense?

To sum up, this camera takes big, beautiful prints that can easily create a crisp 8 x 10 (or smaller images) without any adjustment. And for those of you who are curious, yes, you can adjust the megapixels and take photos at lower resolutions if you choose.


INCLUDES USB CABLE
Surprisingly, many cameras fail to include hardware for direct upload to a computer. Sony makes it easy and provides an easy-to-use USB cable. Quite simply, 1) install the software, 2) plug the cable into your computer, 3) plug the cable into your camera, and 4) watch the photos magically appear on your computer. It's really that easy.

Personally, my wife and I use Shutterfly (www.shutterfly.com) for our image storage, printing, and online sharing purposes, but your mileage may vary. Still, Sony's provision of the tools necessary to get your images to your computer in the first place is a very positive thing.


LONG BATTERY LIFE
Word to beginners: digital cameras are battery hogs unlike most electronic devices you've ever seen. On a busy day of taking vacation photographs all day, you can easily go through one or two sets of batteries. That's why 1) digital cameras almost always have rechargeable batteries and 2) most people buy at least one extra set to install when the other set runs dry.

I've read reviews of this camera stating it has short battery life. Personally, I've experienced the opposite. While we don't typically take 30 or 40 pictures per day, our batteries always last for weeks at a time. Relative to other digital cameras, I've been very, very impressed with the long battery life in this camera.


MULTIPLE ZOOM FUNCTIONS
In the digital camera world there are essentially two kinds of zoom functions: real zoom ("optical") and fake zoom ("digital"). As in most things, real is preferable to fake and thus optical is preferable to digital.

This camera has both. It has a 2x optical zoom, which quite frankly is at the low-end of minimal. I'd like to see it have at least 3x, but 2x is all it offers. Still, at least some real zoom exists.

It also offers 5x digital zoom, which if I recall correctly it calls "Smart Zoom." Regardless, most users will use the two like this: use the optical to zoom in on the image prior to taking the shot, and use the digital zoom to zoom in on and examine the image just taken.

While I'm not normally a fan of digital zoom, I must begrudgingly confess that this 5x Smart Zoom works really well. Digital zoom often pixellates an image, but all I've found with the Sony's zoom is that I can really move in CLOSE on an image without sacrificing picture quality. It really is amazing to withhold.

So, while I'd like to see more of the real zoom, Sony does an exceptional job at delivering quality with the fake zoom it provides.

MISCELLANEOUS
I wish it would have come with a protective case. They're not expensive, but it's tough being locked in to an odd camera size and shape (it's a bit bulky) and thus basically being forced to order a case from Sony.

As for image storage, you'll need to buy a proprietary Sony Memory Stick (or generic knock-off of the same). Thus, memory for this camera will be slightly more expensive than memory for a "normal" digital camera. In practical fact, you probably won't notice this too much.

As a final FYI to beginners, if you have a 128MB Memory Stick, this camera will allow you to store 82 images at 3.2 (actually 3.1) megapixels. And, of course, digital technology allows you to view and delete on the fly so you'll almost always have pictures to spare unless you're on a three-month vacation in a place with no stores and no laptop computer to upload them to.