A good little camera (Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S650)

Member Name: magenta23

Product:	Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S650
Date:	06/12/08 (64 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: High quality photos, range of features

Disadvantages: Weight, not rechargeable battery

This camera is a few years old now, and you can get Sony cameras with higher megapixels for under £100, but this little camera still takes exceptional quality pictures and works faultlessly I see no need to upgrade. If you are looking to buy a digital camera now on a budget, I'd recommened looking around for an older model like this, which may have less impressive specifications but is better quality than a cheap end of the market new - out camera, and you'll probably pay the same price. When I got this it was around the £100 pound mark as are the newer Sony Cybershots, so you can probably now get this model for around £60 or less if you shop around.

I won't list the whole spec of the camera as this can be found under 'Technical details' but as an overview this is a 7.2 megapixel auto-focus camera with 3x optical zoom which is more that adequate for an ameteur or casual photographer. The images it produces are sharp and the colours are rich. The 3x zoom is enough for most people, if you are particularly wanted good quality, very close up shots this be not be good enough for you.

It has a 2" LCD screen for viewing pictures straight away, and again this is more than adequate. I guess, there is room on the back of the camera, this could potentially have been made bigger as there is rather a big border, and they probably would have stuck another £10 on the price for the priviledge. You can view the pictures you've taken by flicking through manually or picking from thumbnails, which is a good time (and battery) saver. You can zoom in an out and even resize when veiwing images too.

The camera has many modes, most of which I don't use and for the majority of people I feel they're surplus to requirements. Modes include - Snow and beach modes, twilight, landscape and high sensitivity. The majority of the time I use Auto and also the movie mode.

The movie mode is good, you can film picture and sound with no time constraints, however you cannot zoom in movie mode, which is a shame, though as I've discovered from looking at other's camera this is quite common, whatever you pay. You can view you movies back on the camera screen but you can't listen to the sound on the camera, you have to view it through you computer or TV to get this (which you do via a mini USB lead)

The flash is brilliant, you can get some great pictures in the lowest light. The Flash range is 0.5 - 3.5m and there's two modes, auto and slow synchro, as well of course being able to turn it on or off altogether.

The camera has 24MB in built memory so you can store some pictures on here, though for people who want to use it a lot it's well worth getting a memory card. Being a Sony, it won't take a normal SD, instead you need the altogether more expensive memory stick pro duo, a 2GB one will set you back around £20 but it's worth it, as you can fit over 1000 photos on it so you'll only ever need one.

The camera takes 2 normal AA batteries, thankfully it doesn't rinse them all that quickly like some cheaper digital cameras can thought it is a shame that it doesn't take a rechargeable one as this is more economical and would make the camera a lot lighter, as it's a little on the heavy side compared to some others on the market.

Overall it's a very easy camera to use and has more than enough modes for the average budding photgrapher. It's more or less point and shoot and you don't have to remember what all the buttons and dial do or what all the icons means as when you switch anything a message come up on the screen telling you exactly what you've swiched to and what you would use it for, which is a good feature and means you can get to grips with it straight away.

I would recommend this camera, it's excellent quality photos and easy to use setup outweighs it's few faults.

Summary: The quality you would expect from Sony

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