Very good all-around point and shoot
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| Review Date: April 22, 2008 |
| Reviewer: E. Woodbury, Washington D.C. |
My wife and I recently upgraded from our Sony DSC-P8 to a Sony DSC-W130. So far we are extremely happy. We shopped around quite a bit before settling on the new cybershot, and spent a good deal of time trying out other brands. In the end, the Smile Shutter brought us back to Sony. It sounds like there is no way it would work, but it really does. We have two young children that are remarkably hard to catch smiling. With the new Sony, all we have to do is turn on the smile shutter and the camera does the rest. So far, we haven't missed a smile with the 3 year (with teeth) and have caught a few of the 4 month old (no teeth). It makes a difference.
The other feature that has been great so far is the burst mode. With my old camera, the missing time between shot resulted in a lot of blurring. The new camera manages to focus each shot much better. We played around with some moving targets, and the pictures came out great. One major drawback of burst mode, however, is that you can't use flash. I took a bunch of pictures indoors and the quality was ok, but not great. The flash just turns off when you switch to burst mode.
The video recording is great on this camera. Obviously not camcorder quality or anything, but very good for what you'd expect from a point and shoot. The sound quality still isn't that great, but much much better from my older camera. It seems like it balances the audio in the first few seconds. If the first few seconds are loud, the whole video will be softer. If you start out soft, however, you bury the needle when it gets lounder leading to some distortion. You also can't zoom while in video mode - something they don't tell you.
The flash recharges after about 1-2 seconds, which is great. It also is pretty effective for long distances.
I like the menu configurations, especially now that I've had some time to play with them.
Picture quality is great, but I'm upgrading from a 2MP camera, so it probably wouldn't take too much to wow me. We took a ton of shots and were impressed at the level of detail when we zoomed in on our computer.
Overall, we are very happy with this camera. It has some limitations and problems, but for the money (and for being a point and shoot) it is great. |
great camera
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| Review Date: May 22, 2008 |
| Reviewer: B. Moore, Belcamp, Maryland USA |
| I also own a Sony A700 but it is a big camera to lug around all the time. I wanted something small that I could throw in my purse to carry all the time. This camera is wonderful. I get great shots in all kinds of light, the pictures are clear, close-ups are amazing, it's fast and the battery lasts a long time. The only thing that I would change to make it even better, is more optical zoom. |
Perfect for my needs!
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| Review Date: June 21, 2008 |
| Reviewer: R. Owens, Arkansas |
| I was looking for a smaller camera that would take good quality pictures, especially on trips. I take college students abroad for a month in Costa Rica and wanted to be able to do a blog with lots of pictures to record their experiences. This camera far exceeded my expectations! It is extremely simple to operate. I have been able to figure out features that are new to me on the fly without having to refer to the manual. Particularly impressive to me are the video capabilities and the high sensitivity / low light with no flash setting. I have been able to take excellent shots in dark museums where no flash is allowed and have been able to upload good-quality videos to the blog. The software that comes with the camera works well and is very user-friendly. The 4X optical zoom is not powerful enough to take fine nature photographs from great distances, but it is good enough to zoom in to compose a picture for most general purposes. All in all, I highly recommend this camera, especially for travel. |
good camera
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| Review Date: May 26, 2008 |
| Reviewer: SesameStick, |
Its all you want in a point and shoot. I can turn it on, not even look in the screen, push the button and get good in focus-properly light pictures. Is very thin, good button lay out. Only hit of a negative with it is the port to connect to the computer is on the bottom, would prefer it on the side, still a strong five stars.
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Fast, fast shutter
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| Review Date: June 9, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Holly Lewis, Medina, OH USA |
| I've been in love with the Carl Zeiss lenses for years now, but my older Sony digital had such a slow shutter I was missing pics of my son. This camera takes really fast pictures!!! I also love the setting that allows me to force the camera to focus on a childs face before anything else in the frame. The blue color is stylish, and its small enough to fit in a front pocket. Looks great in a Kroo Camera Case Premium Quality Carrying Case for Sony Cyber-shot + Bonus Bundled with Universal LCD Screen Protector Kit + Cloth in light blue. |
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