I love this camera!
Written: May 16 '03 (Updated Jun 24 '03)
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Pros: Quality LCD Screen, no shutter lag, excellent pictures, fantastic movies.
Cons: No sports/action setting.
Long time btw shots when using flash.
Bad software.
The Bottom Line: Buy it. This camera is a high quality product!
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| esther323c's Full Review: Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-P72 Digital Camera |
I got this camera for mother's day. It was easy to learn to use, the pictures look great. The only thing I would add to it is a mode for taking action/sports shots. If I want to get non-blurry pictures of my baby waving or crawling, I have to change the ISO setting to 400. Then the images are crisp as can be.
The included software, Pixela ImageMixer, has a poor interface. It can do basic things, but it's not as intuitive as it should be. Essentially, I think the software sucks. I don't do anything with my pictures after I take them, so it doesn't matter to me. But for people who like to poke around and make adjustments, you'll definitely want to buy some better software.
As for the battery, Sony includes a battery charger and two 2100 mAh AA rechargeable batteries. This is the highest mAh AA battery on the market. What surprised me is the that when I looked on their website to order more, the batteries offered were only 1800 or 1850 mAh. So instead, I did a search on Yahoo Shopping for more NiMH 2100 mAh AA batteries and bought them there. I want my batteries to last as long as possible!
This camera records video w/sound that is only limited by the size of the memory card. None of the other digital cameras I looked at had this feature. I have a camcorder so it's not really an issue, but will be great to have in a pinch!
The 16 MB memory stick included is not nearly enough. Get a 128 MB one. They cost less than $50 now if you buy them online at buy.com or you could do a search on yahoo shopping or froogle.com. It is well worth it to have a larger memory stick.
I take all my pictures at the highest resolution, 3 megapixels. But here's what I love about this camera. It is easy to resize the pictures on the camera for emailing. You can resize to VGA and crop, which is what I do. Or you can take pictures in email mode, which will save two pictures, one at your chosen resolution, and one at "email" size (320x240), which is very small (15 or 16 kb) and thus very easy to email. Cool, huh! It would be even better if it were possible to resize to "email" size. I don't know why that's not an option.
Other cool options:
The "burst 2" mode, which lets you take two regular size pictures back to back and only press the button once. Good for catching elusive baby smiles. However, flash is not enabled because I guess the battery can't handle it. Open the window shades! It's worked well for me so far.
"Multi-burst" mode, which capture 16 smaller pictures in a row and is recorded as one image. You can even select your frame interval, but you can't use flash. The manual says it's good for checking your form in sports, but I can't wait to use this when my baby starts walking. Those will be some cool pictures.
"Voice" mode, which lets you capture up to 40 seconds of sound along with the picture. I haven't used this yet. I'm thinking it might be good for a "hi gramma" picture someday, though.
"Clip" mode, in which you shoot up to 10 frames consecutively. Manual says the size is relatively small. I haven't used it yet, I'm not sure why I would use this when I can use the "multi-burst" or "mpeg movie" modes. It must be there for the small file size.
"Mpeg movie" mode. You can choose from two sizes 640(VGA) or 160(email). The 640 size looks very good. I was quite pleasantly surprised. It helps to prop your elbow on something for longer movies to avoid camera shake. The 160 email size is extremely convenient. You can send a movie to a friend without filling up their mailbox. This is important if, like me, you have a lot of friends or family who use hotmail or yahoo for their email.
You can do lots of other stuff on the camera in terms of manipulating the image. You can resize, as I've already mentioned. You can also rotate images, enlarge an image and trim it, play back a slide show, edit movies, view index screens with 9 or 3 images. The 3 image index screen is nifty, it tell you all kinds of info about the picture, like the ISO, the shutter speed.
You can shoot in black and white, sepia, solarize, negative. Also, there are scene settings like landscape, beach, snow, twilight, twilight portrait.
Lots of other more advance options like exposure, white balance, metering, AF focus, etc. Haven't have need to mess with those yet. Also, you can choose your level of flash, brightness of the LCD screen, volume.There's more, but I think this is quite enough for now.
Why I chose this camera over others:
- it uses AA size batteries, not proprietary
- it is small, only needs 2 batteries, not 4 like some cameras
- very minimal shutter lag
- unlimited movie length (limited by memory stick size only) being limited to 15 or 60 second clips is annoying. I'd rather just crop later.
- has four ISO settings: auto, 100,200 400
This means that it takes good pictures in low lighting and fast action. I was very surprised that many new 3 megapixel cameras that cost as much or more than this one have only one ISO setting, ISO 100.
- its "email" settings. I didn't realize how big a deal this was when I bought this camera, but when you and most of your friends use 56k modems, the "email" settings for pictures and movies make sharing so much faster because of the small file sizes. Thus, more sharing, because you don't feel like you're going to do something obnoxious like clog up someone's inbox or bog them down downloading huge files. It's sheer genius on the part of Sony. I use the "email" mode ALL THE TIME!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 330.00
This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Flexible Enough for Enthusiasts
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Epinions.com ID:
esther323c
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Reviews written: 4
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