Excellent entry level camera

Too often products will try and do too much and generally be mediocre at everything including it's core function. Not so with this camera. For $190 you get a compact, versatile camera with features that belie it's price.

At 4" wide by 2" high by 1 1/4" deep this camera is very compact. The body is silver plastic but looks and, to the normal touch, feels like aluminum. The optical viewfinder lacks dioptric adjustment, otherwise it is well made and shows approx. 75-80% of the frame.

Since most cameras nowadays have a nearly identical set of features in class I will save you time and touch only briefly on the common ones and highlight the exceptional (or mediocre) ones. Two leds are next to the optical viewfinder to indicate focus lock and flash readiness. 3x zoom is handled with a rocker switch, smooth and relatively quiet. Four buttons arranged in a circle around a center button provide menu navigation and manual controls when not in auto mode. Rather than the typical top mounted knob, this camera features a small, 3-way slider above the LCD display for setting modes between review/picture/movie. The remaining three buttons switch between menu mode, lcd off, and delete. That's the average "stuff". On the exceptional side of the feature set are an extremely high quality Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens. Barrel and pincushion distortion are nearly non-existent with this lens and it is a delight to find it on a camera in this price range. Sony also includes a low-light focus assist that works quite well. Built in are a microphone and separate speaker for the very versatile movie mode. Movies are limited only by memory space and range from 640x480/fine quality down to 160x120 for emailing. Each mode is very good, if power zoom worked during recording it would be almost perfect. The major drawback to this camera is the relatively small 1.5" LCD. Resolution is adequate at 77k pixels but text is very small and detail can easily get lost in the clutter because of the small display. There is no video out which would be nice for viewing movies.

Overall performance for this camera has been quite strong. Pictures taken outdoors and indoors both show good color saturation and contrast. Focus is very quick and very accurate. Shutter lag is almost non-existent and is still very fast even with flash - approx. 2 seconds between shots. Low light pictures can be a little grainy. Because this is the entry level camera for Sony it does not have access to the lens attachments - not a huge loss for the target consumer. Battery life is excellent. I have yet to recharge my NiMH batteries once and I have taken approx. 75 shots with LCD and most with flash. Internal memory is a very generous 32Mb and memory sticks are no longer more expensive than anything else.

For an enthusiast this would make a nice, second camera to carry around in your pocket for those unplanned action shots but not as a primary, if you are interested in that look to the slightly more expensive DSC-S60 or better yet DSC-S90. For beginners and those who simply want excellent pictures with minimal fuss along with the occasional movie it would be difficult to find a better choice than this one. I looked at many other cameras including the excellent Canon A510 which features a nicer LCD display but the Zeiss lens sold the Sony over all others in this price class for me.