Picture Perfect (well almost...) (Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P31)

Member Name: jellybean11

Product:	Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P31
Date:	01/06/04 (287 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: excellent picture quality, numerous functions, good price

Disadvantages: little tricky to get the hang of

I recently won a lot of electrical equipment. To be precise I won £10,000 worth of Sony equipment (which was chosen for me). I was over the moon at winning so much stuff; I?ve never won so much as a pen before in my whole life so it was a wonderful surprise.

Anyway one such item was the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P31 digital camera. Despite the fact that I had just purchased a digital camera I didn?t oppose to receiving another one for free! I should imagine that I will be one of the only people who can actually review two digital cameras too.

I found this camera to be a little trickier to use than the Kodak one that I had purchased before receiving this one (see op). It seems to have similar features but I found that getting the overall hang of this thing has taken me a bit longer. However now that I have mastered the art of it (I?ll soon be an expert in digital photography!) I have no problems using it at all.

For anyone wishing to purchase this camera I should imagine you will be wanting to compare it to others digital cameras so I will include the list of features that the camera has so you can use it as a comparison. I?m not entirely sure how good/bad all of them are but the ones that I have experienced while using it will be discussed later!

? 1/2.7" (6.64mm) Sony Super HAD 2.0 Mega pixel Effective

? Still Image: 1600 x 1200, 1600x1072 (3:2), 1280 x 960, 640 x 480, 320x240

? MPEG Movie: 320 x 240 HQX, 320 x 240, 160 x 112

? Scene Selection (3 modes: Twilight / Twilight Portrait / Landscape)

? New Focusing System with 3 Area Multi-point AF

? New Noise Reduction: Auto at 1/2 second or longer shutter speeds


? 12bit A/D Conversion - allows a wider dynamic range from highlight to shadow

? Adjustable Flash with Red Eye Reduction

? 1.6" TFT colour (61,000 pixels) LCD Screen with Auto Brightness;

? Fast USB download to computer

? 2 x AA NiMH rechargeable batteries (1750mAH included with BC-CS1 charger)

? Sony Memory Stick media, 8MB included

That?s the technical bit over-I promise! Now onto the practical usage of this thing. Firstly the camera is smaller than the Kodak one and I believe it is a little lighter too, not greatly but gadgets seem to be shrinking every year (in fact I?m surprised mobiles aren?t disappearing) that smaller seems to be seen as better in the gadget world.

The red-eye reduction is excellent too I?ve used this in daylight and at night and have never had any problems at all so I can confirm that this is a very good feature of the camera. Personally I love the self-timer too. It has a 12 second delay which is perfect to get into position and I?ve managed to get some wonderful photos this way.

I?m always slightly dubious of giving my camera to a stranger as you never know, they might run off with it and I especially won?t be handing this bit of technical wizardry to anyone else!

I also love the way that after you have taken the photo you can zoom in straight away to bits of it, so you can see how good the resolution of the picture is, or just see things a little larger if you want to.

You can even hook the camera up to your TV and look at your pictures on there, though I haven?t tried this one yet. As I said on my last op I?m really enjoying the video options on these digital cameras but this is where I feel
this one is not as good as the Kodak one.

There?s no sound! Though I can?t complain, they sent me a digital camera too (op to follow)! Still if you want this on your digital camera then look elsewhere.

The camera has a good battery life. I couldn?t say for certain exactly how long it lasts for as I?ve used it quite a lot and can?t really remember to be perfectly honest but I believe it to be slightly longer than the Kodak one.

Now my complaints on the camera. Don?t worry I only really have one and that is the enter button. It?s so hard to use and moves so easily!

Not the one where you press to take a photo but there?s another one which you use to delete photos or set the date and time. You use a little cursor/joystick thing to do this (sorry I did say I?m not very technical!) and to press enter you depress the cursor/joystick thing while it is in the neutral position however I?m still getting the hang of this one and I ended up changing the time wrongly and also deleting a couple of good photos, so be careful.

Having said that maybe it?s my fat fingers! Others might not experience this problem if you have a tender touch.

Overall I think it?s great but I?m afraid it has to lose a star for the niggling issues I?ve discussed. As you probably know by no mine was FREE! I?ve looked on the Net and the cheapest place I found it was at savastore.com where it?s £170.35 plus £5.82 p&p so not quite as expensive as the one I brought myself (grrrrr).

Anyway hope this will be helpful for you. I look forward to reviewing some more of these technical items (I feel like a kid let loose in a toy store at the moment, It?s so exciting!).

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