dkozin's Full Review: Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-S60 Digital Camera
Having had a good experience with the Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-S40, I decided to try the Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-S60. I got it for $186 - some $30 more than what the S40 cost. The camera has a larger screen than the S40 and features a couple of other improvements.
What Is Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-S60?
The Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-S60 is a 4.1-Megapixel compact digital camera with a 3x optical zoom (39-117 mm equivalent), a 2-inch LCD screen, Carl Zeiss optics, powered by 2 AA batteries. Two alkaline batteries included, rechargeable batteries are recommended for longer battery life.
The S60 stores pictures on a proprietary Sony Memory Stick or Memory Stick Pro and features fast USB 2.0 Hi-Speed connection to PC and Mac computers. It has 32 MB of built-in memory to get you started.
Pictures
The sample photos I took as well as photos of the camera are available at
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Two Reviews
I will provide two reviews below. The first one (short version) will be targeted to people who don't want to read through multiple pages of text to figure out if the camera has what they want and if it performs well. It is targeted to a casual user rather than somebody who cares about the small details.
The second version will contain the description of the more advanced aspects for those who are interested in them. By separating this information, I hope to avoid boring casual shooters to death with information about things they might not need.
Short Review
The Sony DSCS60 looks nice and feels sturdy in your hand. It looks and feels durable. It is heavier than the S40 and is less elongated. Most of the controls of the camera have good tactile feel and the lids open and close snugly. But the zoom buttons feel a bit flimsy.
The camera is relatively compact. The S60 has an on/off button on the top deck, which powers the camera on/off when depressed and held. Once powered, the camera opens the lid that protect the lens and extends the lens forward. This process lasts about 2 seconds, after which you are ready to shoot.
The shutdown is on the slow side however and lasts about 4 seconds. The lens retracts and the lid closes. The camera's top deck also has mode selection wheel with a shutter release button in the middle and a LED that lights up when the camera is on. The bottom of the camera has a battery and Memory Stick card compartment lid as well as a standard threaded tripod mount and a Sony proprietary jack. The supplied A/V/USB cable has a plug that fits this jack on one side and A/V and USB connectors on the other side.
The rear panel of the camera houses a 2-inch LCD monitor, control buttons and a zoom buttons as well as an optical zooming viewfinder.
Just as other cameras from Sony, the DSCS60 is easy to use. I have not read the manual, but was able to use the camera and all its features in no time. The camera can be used by any member of the family and by photographers of all levels of expertise from novices to advanced ones (it even has full manual control).
Just as other current Sony cameras, the S60 uses menus that look familiar if you have used a Sony camera before. If you are upgrading from another Sony model or getting a second camera with the first one being also Sony, the learning curve might be nonexistent.
The easiest way to use the camera is in its Auto mode. Just rotate the mode wheel to the green camera icon, which means Auto. In this mode, you do not have to do anything other than point and shoot - the camera takes care of the rest. The camera uses 5-area smart autofocus (you can select center-area autofocus in manual modes). You press the shutter release button halfway to make camera focus (the camera shows you that it focused and beeps to confirm focus) and then you take the picture by pressing the shutter release button all the way.
You zoom in and out by using the zoom buttons on the rear of the camera. The camera has an optical viewfinder and a 2-inch LCD screen that is accurate, fluid (slightly less fluid in the dark) and works well in the sun and dim light (gains-up).
You can rotate the mode wheel to one of the scene modes (Portrait, Landscape, Show, Beach, etc.) if you want more control. For even more control, you can select Program mode, in which you can select ISO (80-400), white balance, exposure compensation, metering mode (multi, spot), etc.
Unlike the cheaper Sony S40, the S60 has manual focus (distance presets or 0.5m, 1m, 3m, 5m, 7m and infinity), manual exposure mode and the camera can display a live histogram.
Aside from slow powering-off, the s60 is fast in operation. In single-frame mode, the camera could snap pictures as fast as I could push the shutter release button - about once per second. The focusing takes less than a second and the shutter lag (the time between the moment you push the button and the moment when the picture is taken), when pre-focused, is virtually nonexistent.
When taking pictures with flash, the pictures can be taken at about 9-10 second intervals, which is rather slow. The camera has a focus assist light, which is rather bright. The focusing in the darker environments is slower than in bright light, but is below 4 seconds, even at telephoto.
The zooming is relatively slow, but rather precise and lets you fine-tune your composition well. The camera has a 3x optical zoom (39-117 mm equivalent focal length) with f/2.8 maximum aperture at wide angle, f/5.2 at telephoto. While the lens on the S60 does not go as wide as on the S40 (32mm), it has longer zoom.
The S60 lets you select the resolution for your images between 4M (2304x1728), 3:2 (perfect fit for 6x4 prints), 3M (2048x1536), 1M (1280x960) and VGA (E-mail) mode (640x480). For compression, you get a choice between Standard and Fine JPEG quality. The Fine mode uses about 6:1 compression and the Standard uses about 11:1 (about 2 vs. 1.1 MB per picture). There is no TIFF or RAW mode, but you cannot expect it at this price point.
The built-in 32 MB memory can fit about 15 photos at the highest resolution and best quality or 27 photos with Standard quality. You will definitely need to get a memory card (Memory Stick or Memory Stick Pro).
Sony claims that the camera can capture up to 440 high-resolution photos on one battery charge with LCD on using Sony 2100 mAh batteries. I did not validate this claim, but using my 1600 mAh batteries, I shot about 70 pictures with no sign of battery depletion. You can turn the LCD off to conserve the battery power.
The camera produces very good photo with well-exposed, sharp, contrasty and richly-colored images. The camera tends to make pictures warm and the incandescent lighting in Auto white balance mode is very warm as well with reddish tint. Switching to manual white balance helped a lot.
The photos are rather sharp with virtually no softening in the corners of the frame. I found only little chromatic aberration (purple fringing) at wide angle, but not much. Overall, a very impressive performance, especially considering the price of the camera and its features.
The sample photos are available at: http://www.review-shop.com/Sony_DSC_S60/Sony_DSC_S60_Samples_1.html
The camera lets you select automatic ISO or set ISO 80, 100, 200 or 400. The situation with image noise is rather typical for this class of compact cameras. The noise is virtually absent at ISO 80, slight at the ISO 100 in the shadows, gets more pronounced at ISO 200 and gets bad at ISO 400 (and some fine detail get softer to suppress noise). Still, if you are printing 6x4 pictures, the noise should be acceptable at ISO 400. And at ISO 80-100 with 4.1-megapixel shots, you can print up to 10x8-inch sharp enlargements.
Recommendation: I recommend Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-S60 if you want a relatively inexpensive 4.1-Megapixel digital camera with good features and performance that is easy to use. But make sure you are OK with using relatively expensive Memory Stick media, as the price of the media should also be taken into account.
Full Review
Supplied Accessories
- A/V/USB cable
- wrist strap
- software CD-ROM (for Windows® and Mac)
- manuals
- 2 AA alkaline batteries
More on Features and Controls
The S60 has a low-light focus assist illuminator that helps it focus in low light. It focuses very fast in both bright and dark environments, but can take up to 4 seconds in the dark, especially at telephoto.
You can use the exposure compensation in the Program mode and it comes in handy in some situations. There are a bunch of scene modes as well, which help the camera tweak the focusing and exposure settings according to the type of scene.
More on Image Quality
Just as many other Sony cameras, the S60 produces contrasty photos that have a pleasing color with slight oversaturation (by default) and a slight warm cast. The dynamic range of the photos seems to be slightly limited, especially in highlights (as in other consumer-level digicams).
White Balance
The camera has auto white balance or you can choose among several presets including halogen, incandescent, sunny, cloudy, etc. The camera has no custom white balance setting (using a grey card). The camera's automatic white balance favors warmer color casts, and does a good job overall, aside from incandescent lighting, where you should switch to manual white balance.
Build Quality and Ergonomics
The camera has a solid feel and good build quality. The major controls are within easy reach and the tactile response is good overall, but the zoom buttons are a bit flimsy. The lids for battery and memory compartments are sturdy and the battery polarity is well marked. The camera has a relatively compact shape and is convenient to hold.
Menu System
Since I used other Sony cameras, I had no problem using the S60 immediately. I have not read the manual, yet was able to use the camera in all modes. I like Sony's menus less than recent Canon menus or Panasonic ones. They are easy to use, but make things slow. They are certainly usable, it just takes more time to do the same thing with Sony menus than it does with Canon or Panasonic. It takes especially too much time to get to the Setup menus. But the selection of resolution is one button push away. Ditto switching to macro mode or flash mode selection.
LCD
The camera features a 2-inch non-articulated (fixed) LCD screen and an optical viewfinder. The LCD coverage as about 100% - you can see exactly what will be recorded. The LCD is bright, fluid (unless it is dark), has good visibility in sunlight or darkness and decent resolution.
The camera also has an optical viewfinder that is on the tight side (just as the vast majority of other compact digital cameras). You will not see everything that will end up on the picture you take, but it is a usual situation with zooming optical viewfinders and is preferred to the opposite (having thought something will be in the frame and then not finding it in the resultant picture).
Computer Connectivity
The camera uses USB 2.0 Hi-Speed connection to transfer pictures to a computer. You can also remove the Memory Stick memory card (if you use it) and use a memory card reader (if you have one).
I used the camera with the USB/A/V cable supplied. I did not need to install any USB drivers on my Windows 2000 SP4 computer. The file transfer was very fast at about 3,000 KB/s using built-in memory. This is very fast and you might be able to get faster speeds with Memory Stick Pro!
I have not used the software that was provided with the camera since I have Adobe Photoshop CS2.
Manual Adjustments
The camera has a manual exposure mode, where I could select the shutter speed between 30 seconds and 1/1,000 sec. You get two aperture settings for any given focal length, e.g. you can select either f/2.8 or f/5.6 at full wide angle. I found the exposure range generally sufficient, but the problem may arise in bright sunlight or snow, since the camera did not let me select shutter speed faster than 1/1,000 sec, despite the fact that it supposedly can go as fast as 1/2,000. In any case, the aperture does not go lower than f/5.6 at wide angle, which may cause problems in bright light/snow (the best you can do is ISO 80, f/5.6 and 1/1,000 sec).
Reservations
I wish the camera has less noise an ISO 400. As it is, the ISO 400 as virtually unusable. You can print 4x6 photos at ISO 400, but they will not be completely noise-free.
I dislike the fact that the camera uses expensive (and Sony-exclusive) Memory Stick media. SD cards would be a much better choice for us, consumers. But Memory Stick is much better choice for Sony. That way they can make more money. I also dislike the proprietary connector the camera uses for USB/A/V.
Bottom Line
I recommend Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-S60 if you want a relatively inexpensive 4.1-Megapixel digital camera with good features and performance that is easy to use. But make sure you are OK with using relatively expensive Memory Stick media, as the price of the media should also be taken into account.
4.1 MP CCD captures enough detail for photo-quality 12 x 15-inch prints Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar 3x optical zoom lens; 2.0-inch LCD Real Imaging Proces...More at Amazon Marketplace
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