Basic but effective (Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S750)

Member Name: thebigc1690

Product:	Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S750
Date:	15/07/08 (372 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: All the features work fairly well

Disadvantages: A slight lack of features and fiddly buttons.

As I mentioned at the top of my last review I have been testing point and shoot cameras and finding out how they really compare to their bigger more illustrious DSLR counterparts. After reviewing the disappointing unit from Olympus I move on to a much better offering from Sony, the Sony Cybershot DSC-S750. When it comes to style, build and technological genius you can never go far wrong with a Sony and they have proved it again with this nifty little camera.

The Sony Cybershot DSC-S750 is a 7.2 mega pixel small camera packed with very useful features most of which perform very well. It works brilliantly on auto mode but then most of the top point and shoot cameras do, it is how they perform on user settings that usually lets them down. Lots of point and shoot cameras are crammed with user settings these days supposedly to give the photographer the ability to adjust the photos to their liking as they could with a professional camera but the sad truth is they tend not to be very good and can leave a budding photographer feeling like it is their fault when really it is the poor equipment.

This Cybershot however will allow you to play about with the settings rather than letting the camera do it for you and will give true reflections on your work because its features are very good for a camera in this range. The thing with this Sony camera is rather than actually adjusting anything in full manual mode there are lots and lots of presets which allow the photographer to chop and change how they shoot images depending on light and the effect required without the photographer having to think too much, so effectively you get your input in the final image with minimum effort which for people trying to get to grips with photography is the ideal way to start.

The camera comes with a macro mode for close up shooting, this can give very nice effect by concentrating on the actual subject being captured and giving it full focus whilst allowing the backgrounds to blur out, there is also Scene modes for shooting in poor light without using a flash and for shooting in bright sunshine without getting sun burst all over your image and they all seem to work very well. Add to this the very good face detection system that this point and shoot has and you are on to a real winner.

The feel and ease of use of a camera are also very important and I found this to be just a little bit fiddly but I find most point and shoots to be like that probably because as a professional I am used to using cameras anything up to four times their size. It was certainly not the worst for small buttons and controls but not the best either, if you have big hands then you may struggle a bit.

Virtually the entire rear of the camera is taken up by the 2.5 inch LCD screen which is why the controls are so small in size. Whilst I do feel the controls could be better I do think the screen is excellent, easily large enough and very bright with great colour creation to allow you to get a great idea of how good your image is before seeing it on the large screen or in print.

Although the buttons and controls are a bit fiddly they are all very easy to get used to and the manual that accompanies the Sony Cybershot DSC-S750 is easy to understand and follow so the overall usage of the camera is very easy and I doubt anyone would find it too challenging.

The battery life is a very important factor in choosing a camera, especially if you are big into day trips or love going out in the countryside and just taking photos to practice which everyone should if they intend to better themselves at photography because the more you take the better you will get it is that simple. The battery in this camera is a rechargeable lithium-ion battery which performed ok under our testing lasting around 3 hours of continuous shooting but if we stopped to look over images we had taken or used the optical zoom a lot then this lowered so I would suggest a spare fully charged battery with you for long days out.

The image quality with this camera was always good but never brilliant, the colour in the pictures was always very vibrant but there was often a purple fringing noticeable when zoomed in but only under zooming so if you intend to print under 10x12 then you will never notice this. I thought that there was a pink tinge to some of the skin tones in images I had taken using the setting for shooting in bright sunshine but they were again mostly noticeable under zoom so all in all I thought that the camera produced very useable images that would only let you down if large prints were required.

So as with most cameras at this level there were pro`s and con`s and they were as follows.

PRO`s

Good face detection setting
A large selection of shooting modes
An excellent LCD screen
Some useful manual controls for setting sharpness, brightness and flash intensity
Quick flash recycle timing
Good shutter response times

Con`s

A fairly small zoom at only 3x optical
Pinkish skin tones
Poor white balance performance
Poor low light performance
Slow to start up and shut down

As you can see the con`s of this camera are none too severe and I really did enjoy most of what this camera had to offer. There were let downs and the camera did have limitations but that will be the norm with any point and shoot cameras in this type of price range or probably any price range in truth. When compared to the previously reviewed Olympus 1010 this camera outshines the Olympus in almost every department and is also around £50 cheaper with this one being available from as little as £95. The only thing the Olympus had in its favour was its larger 7x zoom but it was only effective to about 5x so even that was nothing to shout about.

So whilst the Sony Cybershot DSC-S750 is a little more basic than the Olympus 1010 at least it can claim that the features it does have do work. There are far more sophisticated point and shoot cameras out there but I would be happy to recommend this particular one to anyone looking to get started in photography and quite happy to start at the beginning. If you already own a point and shoot of any stature and consider yourself to be good at using it then you are probably looking for a more advanced camera than this perhaps even a high zoom or a bridge camera but for beginners this is a good camera that will perform well.

FEATURES

7.2-megapixel
3x optical zoom lens, equivalent to 35-105mm
Additional Smart Zoom
2.5-inch color LCD monitor
Shutter speeds from 1/2,000 to 1 second, depending on mode
Built-in flash with four modes
Memory Stick DUO / DUO PRO memory slot
Custom rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack
Multi-connector for A/V television connection and USB 2.0 connection
PictBridge compatible

SPECIAL FEATURES

Seven preset Scene modes
Burst shooting mode
Face Detection technology
Macro and Self-Timer modes
Adjustable ISO from 100 to 1,250 equivalents, plus an Auto setting
Adjustable white balance with six settings

I suppose I should also briefly mention the cameras ability to shoot video as most if not all point and shoot cameras can. It is fairly basic and will not produce clear video images in anything other than perfect light. The sound is however fairly good although bad wind noise is picked up when outdoors. I am never a big fan of this function anyway, let's let cameras be cameras and video cameras do the videoing!!

Thanks for reading!

©2008 thebigc1690

Summary: Recommended to begginers

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