Full Review

As you can tell from my title, I do not have anything just blatantly negative to say about this camera. There are a ton of positives.

First some background. My last and first digital camera was a Sony Mavica MVC-FD90. Otherwise, I have not used any other digital cameras except for briefly borrowing a friends unit.

I am not a professional photographer and basically bought this model after searching and thinking and seeing the price drop to $350 (when I bought it...I now see it is going even lower).

I like the compact size, the quality of the pictures I can get (beware if you have a shaky hand…you will learn quickly that does not compute, but can be fixed by just snapping quite a few pictures). I was pleased that considering I needed to use the camera the very day I got it, I had no trouble figuring just about everything out that I wanted/needed. It is not rocket science…at least the basic features. There are way more features on this camera than I will ever need, but it is nice to have them there, and better that than the alternative. I have not played much with the manual controls, although I did have occasion to use the Night Shot feature, which worked very well, although the compromise is the slight green ting to everything. Better that than no picture at all. Also using the little laser for low or no light shots works incredibly well….almost too well: I wanted a shot of some friends in a room with no electricity, and using that and the flash, it appears that the room was fully lighted! An added plus is seeing people freak out when scanned with a laser, “What is that!”. If you like to explain things, this is cool, otherwise, it becomes a hassle explaining that you are not indeed toasting their retinas. Being able to carry this on my belt (I bought a $6 case), and whip it out when needed…very handy. And durable so far…sometimes having it on my belt while doing construction and mixing cement…no issues so far. Ah, the battery..works well, I rarely think about charging it, it last so long, which is very nice.

So, now comes the whining. Well, frankly I thought that the start up and power off times would be quicker than they were. A far cry better than my old mavica, but still not super quick. You better thick ahead just a bit for that picture that is disappearing fast. And when taking pictures with a flash, recharge time can be a bit annoying...not super long, but it did take me back that it charged almost like some disposable cameras I have seen. Are these major issues that plague me constantly? No, not really. But a little quicker speed in those two areas would help quite a bit. The LCD screen, hey that is pretty small! But, really does not bother me…I only need to see if I screwed anything up, really looking at them always waits until I get home anyway. The only other item is the zoom at only 4x...which I almost hesitate to complain about, since if it did in fact do more (it will do digital in lower resolutions)then the shaky hand factor would be even more of an issue.

I opted for a 512MB memory stick (The memory stick they include...what a joke! Why bother?..ok, don't get me started, I just resigned myself to the fact they are not going to include something decent sized). What a change from using floppy disks to never really have to worry about disk space filling up, even taking in 5MP resolution and taking over 100 pictures with room to spare. Normally though, I would say a 256MB would be sufficient, especially if you can download the pictures daily or even a few times a week. By the way, getting the pictures from the camera to the computer, for me, is incredibly easy. Of course, having a Sony computer with a memory stick slot helps…another reason I decided to go Sony on the camera.

So, I am happy, very happy, do not regret my decision, just a little whining about the only slight downsides to an otherwise great camera!