 Pricey but totally worth owning |
| Review Date: June 25, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Gadgester, Mother Earth |
I've had the T100 for just a few days (including a weekend of heavy shooting). I love it. Compared to similar offerings from Panasonic, Canon, Fuji, to name a few, it's expensive, but it has these following features that I find useful -- and they do work well in the real world:
- Excellent picture quality: you buy a digital camera to shoot great-looking pictures, right? The T100 takes excellent pictures indoors and outdoors; like other Sony digicams, it's especially good at taking scenery photos
- Face detection: automatically sets focus and exposure optimally for light-skinned faces in the picture; seems to work well in well-lit scenes
- Optical image stabilization ("SteadyShot"): helps you steady slow-shutter shots; saves you about 1 f-stop; only Canon and Panasonic besides Sony use this kind of sophisiticated, non-digital technology
- 5x optical zoom: the highest among ultra-slim digital cameras; zoom range is 35mm-175mm equivalent in a 35mm film camera
- Zoom optically while shooting video: I'd been wanting this since the first day (over eight years ago) I got my first digital camera (a Fuji); yes, you can zoom the lens smoothly and *optically* (as opposed to digitally) while shooting in movie mode
- 3" super-bright LCD: the regular brightness level is pretty usable outdoors, but if you're shooting in bright sunlight, you can crank up the LCD brightness even further (at the expense of shortened battery life, of course)
- Decent battery life: rated at 340 shots per charge by the Japanese CIPA standard; this translates into pretty good real-world battery life
- Some manual controls available: EV compensation, etc.
- Gorgeous design: and yes, I got this red version :)
So is this worth almost $400 for an 8-megapixel camera? For me, the 5x zoom and optical image stabilization are must-have features (I'm nuts about shooting low-light photos without using the flash, unless I'm shooting with my Nikon D70 digital-SLR with sophisticated lighting setup that reproduces a natural-light look to the scene).
Canon's and Panasonic's and Fujifilm's shoot excellent-quality pictures, too, but only the T100 has the right mix of image quality (and a great movie mode with zoom), standout styling and ease-of-use that make it a total best buy for me.
Your comments and questions are welcome. |
Great Little Camera
|
| Review Date: April 9, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Bhavya K. Desai, New York |
First of all I would like to say that I was very reluctant to buy a SONY camera. After doing a lot of research for my needs I ended up with Canon 800IS and Sony's new toy T100. Ofcourse canon has the best overall ratings for ever but I wanted a stylish looking camera for my needs. Sony T100 is the best looking camera I have seen. It's features are awesome compared to it's small size. You can take it everywhere. Big bright screen on the back clearly visible in bright sunlight. It takes good indoor pictures too. I tried to play with its settings for while and thought that camera was not good. But then the best feature of the camera made it a winner for me. The auto mode takes great pictures and no need to set anything. Sometimes changing auto ISO helped to reduce the graniness but to be very honest if you are not going to blow the image to larger sizes (which would be 99% of the time atleast for me) it won't make difference. Just Point and Shoot. You get a perfect image for viewing on computers. No complaints apart from optional docking station which costs about $80. 5x optical zoom is boon to me as 3x was merely zoom. Also zomming while taking movies makes this a small camcoder with 640x480 30fps shooting.
It doesn't have touch screen like T50 and so it's responsiveness is better. I would like it bit faster though. Also camera takes pictures at very fast rate and the first picture you take is less than 2 secs.
I would highly recommend this camera to anyone who can afford it.
|
Unbelievable pictures
|
| Review Date: July 13, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Stephen Fairley, Phoenix, AZ |
I just bought this camera (my 3rd digital) to take with me to Alaska for 2 weeks. Unbelievable! The pictures came out way better than I expected. Here's specifically what I liked most:
1. rapid fire pictures--you know how when you are driving down the road at 70 mph and see a beautiful view in the distance and want to capture it? Well, this camera's multi-picture capabilities are outstanding. I took dozens of pictures out the front and side windows of the car traveling 70-100mph (I wasn't driving) and over 90% of them came out perfect with no blurring! My friends joked about how I would "go paparazzi" on the trip.
2. User interface. After 2 weeks using this camera I know more about how to precisely set the exact setting I want (extremely adjustable) than I ever figured out with my last digital, a Canon, in over 2 yrs of using it. The interface is very user friendly. If you can use an iPod, you can figure this camera out.
3. Full motion video. The video is fantastic. even full screen on my 21" computer monitor the videos are clear and sharp. You can zoom in 5x when filming for close ups and distant settings with sound. Wow! My other camera pixelated a lot. This one has none of that unless you move the camera around too fast and then the images blur a little.
4. Size is smaller than my wallet. This allowed me to feel comfortable just sticking it in my pocket and taking it everywhere. Its just slightly bigger than my Motorola Razr cell phone. When you take the camera everywhere you take a lot more pictures (over 1600 pics in 2 weeks on vacation--get a 4 meg memory card. Amazon has them for $50-$60, well worth it). The zoom is awesome and does not come out of the camera like most do. All the zoom is internal, even the 5x optical.
I give this camera 7 stars out of 5! Simply irresistible and unbelievable! |
Spectacular!
|
| Review Date: October 6, 2007 |
| Reviewer: V.R., California, USA |
I own the Sony Cybershot DSC T100 red, and I must say that this is one of the best compact digital cameras I have ever seen. I have prepared a list of pros and cons for your camera-buying needs.
PROS (There's a lot of them.):
-The camera is sleek and stylish; it fits in your pocket and is great on-the-go.
-The screen is HUGE! 3 inches! Granted, it's not as big as the T200 touch-screen, but at least you don't get the screen all greasy with your fingers.
-The picture is crystal-clear. I've taken many pictures of my cat with it, and I could see every hair and every spot. I could even see the small drops of water on her nose (now that's clear)!
-Good automatic mode if you don't have time to dabble with the settings.
-Many many many different picture settings. There's one for outdoors, one for at night, one for high speed, and many more.
-The macro mode is amazing! When you're taking pictures close-up, the results are fantastic. This camera even comes with super macro mode, which means you can shoot something with astounding clarity from less than one inch away.
-If you're shooting a rapid action sequence, the burst mode is great. It shoots continuously as the shutter button is held.
-The start-up time is very fast. When my cat starts to yawn, I have enough time to open the camera and take a picture before her yawn ends.
-5x zoom is really all you need for everyday picture-taking. It's super accurate as well and when you zoom, it flows instead of pausing after every zoom level.
-The camera has a high-definition output and it takes pictures in high definition. It also has a 16:9 picture mode so you can view pictures on a 16:9 television.
-VIDEO! VIDEO! VIDEO! The video quality is so good that this camera actually replaced my regular video camera. Astoundingly clear video. I've made several vacation home movies thanks to this amazing device.
-If your pictures always come out blurry because your hands shake, this camera has SteadyShot.
-The display comes with a power save mode (the led becomes darker) which saves you battery life.
-The picture review response time is very fast, you don't have to wait long at all to see your picture.
-FACE DETECTION! Makes faces really clear. I tried this out on a page of an old yearbook, and the camera detected the faces on the page!
-Red-eye reduction is there, but that's a standard feature nowadays.
CONS (It was very hard to find any.):
-The button to view pictures is located at the top of the camera next to the power button, so if you have big fingers, you might accidentally press "off" when you want to review a picture.
-Under fluorescent lighting, the pictures don't give off very natural colors, but they are still suitable for every-day purposes.
-This camera doesn't have a viewfinder but only has a screen. So for people that are used to looking through a viewfinder, it's quite a change. You cannot turn the screen off, you can just dim it.
-The SteadyShot feature doesn't work in auto mode.
-You can't use flash on super macro mode.
-The face detection is only for eight people, so if you take a lot of group photos with a large group, some faces might be blurry.
I recommend this camera to anybody. It's a great little device for the price. It's worth every penny.
|
Great little camera
|
| Review Date: May 22, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Nurseychic, Boston, MA |
| I loved the size and color (red).. nice and compact without being too small - I can hold it comfortably in my hands. I love the large LCD screen. The controls are easy to use.. the 'recall last picture button' on top by the power button is so convienient because everyone wants to see the pictures. I'm still learning the little features of the camera, but you can point and shoot right out of the box. I love that the camera has a 5x optical zoom and the lens stays inside the camera - amazing - the slide door protecting the lens after use is also nice and a feature of all the sony T series. The movie mode is awesome - you can take as long a movie as you want - until you fill up your card or run out of battery - plus the sound quality on the recordings is great for such a small camera. I've found the battery holds it's charge very well.. bought a spare anyways.. using a 2G card so can take tons of pics. It's definately not a SLR - but man.. takes great pics.. even mirco zoom pics.. I own a digital SLR for my photography habit - but this camera takes almost the same quality pictures - 8mp! Crazy - do we need that many pixels?? (my digital SLR is only 6mp!!). I have better zoom and wide angles on the SLR, but I use this one to take everywhere - the digital SLR is too big to carry around all the time :) The camera makes cute sounds turning on/off (I haven't added music yet but you can!). Nice black and white and sepia modes. You can play/edit the picture after you take it on the LCD screen. So easy to use. Cute and sofisticated. Compact, but easy to hold. SO far no complaints and I'm recommending it to friends. They like it too. |
|
No video reviews found for this product.
