It's a pretty little camera! (Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P9)

Member Name: christh

Product:	Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P9
Date:	29/07/04 (924 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Light, small, stylish, A true point and shoot camera, Good set of controls

Disadvantages: Cannot use disposable batteries, Movies need good lighting

The Sony Cybershot DSC-P9 is a 4 megapixel compact 'point and shoot' camera. The DSC-P9 is not a new camera by any means, having been released in 2002, and has been since superceded by other cameras in Sony's (particularly confusing) lineup, notably the 5 megapixel DSC-P10 and 5.1 megapixel DSC-P93 cybershots. However, little other than the increase in photo resolution has changed during this time, and as I rarely find myself taking photos in the DSC-P9's maximum resolution (2272x1704), I'm sure bargains can be had buying the P9 over its younger brothers!

This is my first review, so please bear with me here. Any constructive criticism is welcome!

So, what do you get for your money? Well, the camera specs are:
o a 3x OPTICAL zoom, a 2x digital zoom, and can take photos at 2272x1704, 2272(3:2), 1600x1200, 1280x960, 640x480
o a movie recording feature with microphone, at 320x240 HQX, 320x240, and 160x112.
o Scene Selection (3 modes: Twilight / Twilight Portrait / Landscape)
o Auto Focus with 3 Area Multi-point or Centre AF
o Low light focus assist illuminator
o Adjustable Flash with Red Eye Reduction
o A 1.5" TFT display (I don't think I've even looked through the viewfinder!)
o Audio and Video (NTSC or PAL selectable) output
o Dimensions 113 x 53 x 36 mm
o Weight (Inc. batt) 203 g

Supplied goodies:
o Sony DSC-P9 Digital Camera
o Battery Pack
o AC Adapter / Charger
o Memory Stick (16 MB)
o Hand Strap
o USB Cable
o A/V 
7;able
o Instruction Manual
o CD-ROM: Sony USB Drivers, bundled software

Appearance:
The camera looks great, with an all over brushed steel effect than doesn't look or feel tacky at all. The camera is quite small - the width is less than that of a CD, and the height much less than half a CD's width. Equally at home carried in the palm of your hand or slipped into a jacket pocket. The camera is quite light, although certainly not enough to feel flimsy; the camera seems very sturdily built. In fact it seems to have survived a drop from a few feet onto concrete with no damages (if you're in the market for the camera don't worry, I'm not selling my camera anywhere at the moment!). The camera's edges are nicely rounded, and after extended use your left hand will really appreciate the larger curve on the left side! The 'dots' on the back of the camera help you find the controls, and the metallic 'hook' grip on the front of the camera as an extra safeguard. In fact the front finger grip works surprisingly well, making it easy to hold and shoot with just one hand. The controls are well laid-out, the zoom and menu options directly affecting the picture are all on the back of the camera, and the power switch, take photo button and dial for picking what type of photo you want to take (still photo, movie, photo review) are all on the top of the camera. Everything is easy to reach, using the zoom control with your thumb will become second nature in no time.

LCD Display:
The 1.5" LCD display is nothing short of excellent. Completely visible in every lighting condition I've used it in; the screen is very bright, sharp and colourful, and has a special reflective coating. The thick protective cover is also very reassuring.

Battery: <
br>Power can only be supplied by the provided battery pack, which is something of a double-edged sword - while it keeps the weight down on the unit, and is easier to deal with than having to constantly replace the batteries, if you're on the go and your battery is about to run out, there's not much you can do! Overall though, if you're able to reach a power point once every couple of days, this won't be a problem and gets a definite thumbs-up from me. Battery life is decent - I'd guess that you could get a solid two hours of usage out of it, and browsing some tests out on the web seems to back that up.

Menu System:
The menu system offers a wealth of options that you can access on the fly - no having to alter image resolutions or image quality whilst the camera is docked to your computer at home. The camera happily exists with lots of differently sized images, and movies all present on the same memory card. There are plenty of options available for the fiddler (i.e. me) to alter the next shot - focus can be explicitly set, light level corrections, white balance, image effects (sepia, B/W), and a lot more. I find it best to just leave things alone, having come home with a 'reel' full of out of focus photos once I've got the images up on the big screen. There are further options for manually or automatically setting flash, red-eye prevention (a real blinder this one), and timered shots. The LCD display can be switched off if necessary, which is good because this is quite a drain on the battery.

Input/Output:
On the back of the camera, underneath the main controls is a swing door that reveals the AC charger slot, USB slot and TV out slot. The TV out is an excellent feature, being able to show the contents of your memory card is ideal for boring your friends and relatives - slide show style!
You can also interact with the camera / images in this way, deleting photos if you wish. Downloading photos from the camera is easy, after installing the drivers onto your computer, connecting the USB cable from your PC to the camera makes the camera appear as another disk drive in Explorer. So it's very easy to work with the photo files - drag and drop, copy and delete.

Image Quality:
I'm no photographer, so if you want detailed comparisons between other cameras I'd try a professional camera review site, but from my experience with consumer-level digital cameras, the images that come out from the DSC-P9 are absolutely fine. Considerably better than my previous camera, the Kodak DC280, at comparable photo resolutions.

Videos:
The DSC-P9 can record movies, although if you want to use this feature I'd recommend buying a larger memory card as although the video is highly compressed, 16MB isn't going to get you a lot of video. The camera captures at 30 frames per second and has a microphone too. A problem with the video function is that you really need daylight or very good lighting to be able to see anything, a 60W light bulb won't do you any favours. Still, it'll be fine for filming the daylight hours of your holiday (so long as you don't go inside any badly lit places).

Overall:
If you've been reading so far I think you can tell I quite like the camera! The fact the camera comes with a memory card and battery pack is excellent, and means you can pretty much get going straight out of the box. A possible con is that the camera cannot be used as a web cam, but then web cams are so cheap now that you might as well just splash out on a dedicated one and not have to worry about your lovely cybershot falling off your desk. The movie featur
e is a bit of a disappointment, but it has its uses. The battery life is good, the camera looks great, feels great and I've had the camera a couple of years now, with no problems and I heartily recommend it.

I'd imagine you can pick up the camera new for around £200. It'll probably go for less than that on ebay, seeing a couple of auctions at £110-£150 right now (but they'll go up!).

Summary: