Pros: Battery life. Portability. Absolutely wonderful pictures in good lighting!
Cons: Poor flash. Lots of red-eye.
The Bottom Line: Know its limitations. This isn't going to take studio quality pictures, but it's extremely portable, and takes very nice pictures if you have decent lighting.
jtjackson's Full Review: Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-T1 Digital Camera
I bought this camera for my wife after she fell in love with her brother's wife's brother's small camera that could fit into an empty Altoids box. I'm not going to give much details on that camera, just that it was small.
So I buy the DSC-T1 for my wife on a price drop that, unbeknownst to me, signals the impending release of the next upgrade to this product line from Sony. Oh, well. See my review of Buy.com on how some of this turned out.
Overall, it's a great camera. The optics seem pretty good, generally producing decent photographs. The user interface is acceptable, just a little slow to get to some of the picture-taking features (flash on/off, etc.) that you would want to use often. You get used to it, like anything else, and it isn't a problem.
Gosh-darn is it portable! Seriously, it's about the size of a small tin of Altoids. It boots up pretty quick from "off" to "ready to take pictures" pretty quickly - definitely quickly enough for any situation we've been in, and definitely far quicker than my old Kodak DC-4800.
The best use for this camera is under good lighting conditions. You'll get great pictures. I have a picture of my 3-year-old daughter out in the yard on a sunny day that I can zoom in on with Microsoft's Photo Editor that shows the lines and color variations in her front teeth!
The flash seems really weak. Forget the 4 to 9 feet recommendation. If it's more than 6 feet, the flash isn't going to cut it. You're better off turning off the flash and using Photoshop/Photodeluxe/GIMP to brighten up the picture. Just hold yourself steady, because the lens will be open for a longer time, making it easy to have a smeared, streaky picture.
Red-eye, for some reason, is much more likely to occur. And, for some reason, much more difficult to get rid of. I'm used to taking pictures with my Kodak DC-4800, and using Adobe Photodeluxe to remove red-eye, when it occurs. With the DSC-T1, red-eye happens more frequently, and Photodeluxe only gets rid of it automatically about 10% of the time. My wife has no idea how much time I spend cleaning up her pictures.
Battery life has been pretty good. No, I don't have numbers, but a couple of months ago we were on a cruise, and took about 100 pictures during the week. The battery didn't need to be charged, and we didn't need to drop back to the spare battery I bought.
Transferring to the PC is pretty easy. The camera shows up as basically another disk drive, so I can just drag and drop from the camera to the PC. There are some choices here - for instance, you are supposed to be able to set stuff up to transfer without much intervention, but I'm a bit of a control freak, so I much prefer to plop the camera into the cradle, and move files myself.
The video capability is average. Don't buy this camera based on the bonus feature of short MPEG videos. The quality is pretty low. It's a cute thing to have, and you might get some decent use out of it in close up situations with really good lighting, but outside of that, use your camcorder.
Oh, and it probably goes without saying, but buy more memory! You'll burn it quick with a 5.1 MP camera.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 435 This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Easy Enough for Anyone to Use
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