Perfect digital camera (Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P10)

Member Name: EdReg

Product:	Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P10
Date:	29/08/03 (2399 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: zoom, Battery life

Disadvantages: Memory stick write rate

On opening the box, my first impression was how small and simpler the P10 was. After checking the manual to ensure I enserted the battery and Memory stick (32Mb) the correct way, I was ready to take my first photos.

After years of using an SLR film camera, I have been very disappointed with the results from many digital cameras, but after using the P10, I was pleasantly suprised.

The P10 offers many different resolutions, but I set it to the maximum of 5.0 megapixels to gauge the quality. I couldn't believe the results. I took a photo and printed it on photopaper, and it was as good as a real processed photo. On the highest quality, the file size was around 2.5Mb which although too large for e-mailing, was still small enough to fit a decent number of photos onto the mem stick, and keep a high level of clarity.

The camera has all the facilities I enjoyed on my SLR, including zoom, shutter speed altering, and film speed, but in a fraction of the size. The lens retracts into the body meaning it can be easliy carried in a pocket, and light enough to cause no annoyance.

The box states the camera to be 200g including battery and mem stick, which is very light when you actually pick it up.

The control wheel is very simple to use, except for the fact that the icons don't seem to mean an awful lot, but a quick look at the manual soon sorted that out. The shutter button is in the middle of the control wheel, and has a very high level of feel to it. You can tell exectly when the photo is going to be taken, helping with timing.

The screen can be used to view the current photo opportunity, as well as preview already taken photos, delete unwanted shots, or even zoom in to check details.

Video files can be produced, and the inbuild microphone provides a pretty decent sound quality too. These files are quite big, but the video is a nice touch when you start using this camera

The optical zoom i
s fantastic. 3x zoom lens is fitted, but you have a very fine control over the zoom level, and can move in 0.1 increments.
As with all digital cameras, the digital zoom is not up to much, and should only be used as a last resort, on the highest quality.

I took both cameras to the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, but the SLR never left my bag. I was able to get enough zoom and a fast enough shutter speed to take great photos during the race, and the podium afterwards.

Using Windows XP I just connected the USB cable and downloaded the photos straight to the computer. With Win98 it was a simple case of inserting the CD, and once the software had installed, the camera connected first time.

The camera comes with a 32Mb mem stick, rechargable battery, a charger, USB cable, driver CD and manual.

The battery took a few hours to charge to maximum, but then gave me around 5 hours of continuous use, with the screen on all the time. Far better than anything I have used before.


My ONLY slight disadvantage of this camera was that during the multi frame shoot, the write time got a little on the long side, and the few seconds waiting to take another burst of frames got a little annoying. This was a VARY minor point though, and only occured in the multi shoot mode.

This camera is stunning, and well worth the extra money over other point and click style digital cameras. I find it a very good comparison to film cameras, and will produce great photos. A real pleasure to use.

Summary: