Waveman's Full Review: Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-S30 Digital Camera
Even I am sometimes guilty of the spontaneous purchase - the thrill of saying "yeah I'll take it" with absolutely NO CLUE whether what you're buying is a quality item or is even worth the price of the fluff sitting at the bottom of your pocket.
Buying the DSC-S30 was one of those moments, and while it was an exciting purchase (my wife and I have wanted a digital camera for ages), there was that little voice softly saying "but what if it's a lemon?" Thankfully, we ignored that little voice, because this time throwing caution to the wind paid off big time. Not only had we made a good choice, but in fact we'd made the good choice!
The camera was bought at Sears. They had the price set at the full retail of $499. With a price match to the local Best Buy of $399 and the Sony rebate of $100 (for also buying a Vaio, that's another tale), the final price was $299 plus tax. Just beautiful. What's even more satisfying is that it's easily worth $499 when considering what other similar cameras are going for now.
So on to the camera.
Setting it up was a breeze, really just a few short steps: attach the lens cover, attach the carrying strap, plug in the battery (or hook up to wall power), insert the memory stick, and you're off! Or so I thought. Interesting anecdote here, and remember that I was new to digital cameras. I got it all set up (thanks to the manual, which is straightforward) and tried to take a picture. I pressed the shutter button, heard a beep, saw something on the LCD, but no picture! What?! I tried a million different things, from formatting the memory stick to using different resolutions to adjusting the flash, the focus, you name it. I learned a lot about the camera during that mad frenzy to take a picture, that's for sure. I was just about ready to give up and call it broken when I noticed something in the manual about "press the shutter button halfway..." OH. DUH.
With that out of the way, I took about 20 pictures of everything I could find in the house. My wife, the cat, a pumpkin, myself... nothing was safe. It was so much fun!
Let's go over the pros of the camera:
Display: The LCD display is very bright and crisp, and aiming the camera using it seems natural. You can even make it brighter with a slider on the side of the camera. Navigating the camera's many features using the on-screen interface is painless and intuitive. Sony's menu system is arranged very nicely and the one-button controller works surprisingly well. I was able to try out most of the features for the first time without referring to the manual.
Battery: Sony's InfoLITHIUM battery charges fully in a bit less than two hours, and according to the manual lasts that long while in use. My own experiences seem to agree with this. A very nice feature is that the camera reports the approximate number of minutes of charge remaining on the battery. Very handy.
Memory Stick: Sony's proprietary memory system. These little sticks hold memory up to 128MB and I hear that 256 and 512MB versions are on the way! That's a LOT of pictures (understatement). We picked up a 16MB stick with the camera for about $30, since it only comes with 4MB. The only problem I can see with these sticks is that they're so small - it'd be very easy to lose track of one. Transfers from the memory stick (inside the camera) to the PC are a snap. The camera comes with a USB cable - just connect the cable between the camera and the PC. The first time you do this, it will install some drivers (included on a CD with the camera), and away you go. The memory stick from that point on is recognized by Windows as a removeable drive, and the files are stored there as JPG or TIFF, so you can simply copy them from there to your hard drive, or view them right from the memory stick. Couldn't hardly be easier.
Lens/Picture Quality The lens is a 3x optical zoom lens, with up to 6x digital zoom. Another great feature of the camera is that the level of zoom is displayed on a bar on the LCD when it's being adjusted. Even better is that it indicates when you're leaving optical zoom and entering digital zoom mode. It also has a macro mode, good for focus at down to 3cm. Practically a microscope at that level - you can easily make a dime fill the entire display and still be in focus. The picture quality is just outstanding as well. Colors are vibrant and seem true. For a camera in this price range, I was impressed.
Extras The camera is loaded with features, but a couple stand out to me. First off, you can hook up the output of the LCD display to a TV or anything with a composite video input, using a supplied cable. This means you can hook it up to a VCR and actually use it as a movie camera! WOW. Of course you're limited by the length of the cable, but still... Also, the slide show mode is awesome. In this mode, as you'd expect, it cycles through all the photos currently on the memory stick. Now combine these two features, and you have a stroke of Sony genius: run a slide show of your photos on your TV! The quality of output to the TV is really really good - I was amazed by how good it looked. One final feature I'm glad they included was the ability to store images in uncompressed TIFF format. Even though it's a memory hog, it's really worth it. You tend to forget that JPG does degrade image quality since it looks so good, but comparing the two you definitely notice artifacts in the JPG output. Take a few photos using the camera's highest resolution in TIFF format if you want to impress your friends.
The Cons (yes there are a couple):
No optical viewfinder: Most of the time this isn't an issue, because the digital viewfinder is so bright. But in extremely bright conditions, an optical viewfinder would have been nice.
Lens/Button Design: I'm not terribly fond of the placement for the buttons which operate the user interface. The problem is that I tend to use the thumb of my left hand to use these buttons, and in this position it's natural for the forefingers of this hand to grasp the camera by the lens! Often I have to remember not to do that. A minor gripe to be sure, but a gripe nonetheless.
Conclusion:
This camera practically has it all and then some, with a few bonus features I wasn't expecting. In its price class it can't be beat, and I am extremely pleased with my "accidental" purchase. Very highly recommended!
Sony (Cyber-Shot DSC-S30) Battery. 30 days money back & 12 months warranty on Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-S30 Battery Slim. This 1500.00 mAh battery delivers...More at eBatts.com
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.