Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W1

Reviewed by: davidxzebra

Duration of ownership:

Strengths: Small and lite enough to fit in shirt pocket. Fast shutter speed. Excellant in low light (with tripod). Cheap batteries that last 200-300 pics. Very sharp and clear pictures in P mode.

Weaknesses: Soft pictures in all full auto modes (but great pics in P and M modes)

Overall Evaluation: I have used this camera extensively and have used all its features. I was worried at first by reviews of blurry images and soft pictures. I've read professional reviews stating similar weaknesses. So then why do my images turn out so great. Well, because all magazines reviews only evaluate the full auto settings. This camera has great sharpness but in auto (A) and other auto modes the default sharpness is set to normal instead of sharp. If you are the kind of person that will use auto settings most of the time don't buy this camera, buy the cannon A95 5M instead. It has great auto settings. But really, you can buy a cheaper camera that has no manual settings. Why spend money on manual (advanced settings) if you never use it?Well program (P) mode is where you can easily take great sharp pictures. Set the sharpness to "+". If you are taking landscape shots change the contrast and saturation to "+". You will take beautiful shots. Now with increased contrast you may (as expected) experience white out if the picture contains a lot of white. In such cases turn contrast to "-" to eliminate that effect. The auto settings have a default (unchangeable) contrast of "+" so you may experience the whites being washed out. Sony does this to (rightly so) give their pictures better colors then most camera's.In (P) mode you can also select the ISO setting. You should do this because the auto settings tend to pick the lowest ISO setting for you to give you the highest res possible. The downside is that a low ISO setting (say ISO 100) will also force a lower shutter speed?thus produces some blurry pics. If you are indoors set the ISO to 200 to eliminate this problem. As it will double your shutter speed. If it is low light conditions set the ISO to 400. The grainier pics won't be noticeable in a 4 x 6 printout.I also like the no limit high res video mode at 30fps. Wow, it looks great. I went to a robot expo and captured some great video. I captured about 20 min in 15 fps. Something you could not do with a cannon. They limit the length of your video to 30sec.In conclusion, I am really happy with this camera. Its small size means I can put it in my shirt pocket. And as long as you use (P) mode you will get great pics. Luckily this camera is so easy to use that you will want to try out various settings for fun.