Top quality results and easy to use (Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S50)

Member Name: delmonti

Product:	Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S50
Date:	03/04/01 (409 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of functions. Great quality images

Disadvantages: No optical viewfinder, memory stick capacity

I've owned the Cybershot DSC-S50 for about 8 months now, and I've managed to take over 250 pictures with some great results.
As common with all digital cameras today they all suffer from the Marketing mens' hype and this camera is no exception. Forget any references to how many special effects or digital effects a camera has, its the ability to take sharp, balanced colour photographs that count.

Luckily, the DSC-S50 is exceptionally good at high resolution (1600x1200) with only 2.1 mega pixels to play with. More important is the ability to manually adjust the white balance and exposure (but you can also set it to auto). Image sizes available are 1600(3:2), 1024x768 and 640x480. The other useful features is the ability to record a small voice over to go with the "e-mail" format size (640x480). This will allow you to record a voice clip to the image ready for e-mailing off. You can also record a small "movie" with the camera, depending on available memory, but I found this to be more gimmick than actually useful.

The fold out LCD is quite good but can suffer outdoors in bright sunlight and can be useless if the light is very dim. Without an optical viewfinder this can make the camera almost useless!!
Having said that, the camera does have a flash with red eye reduction and I've produced some great images using it.

Autofocus could be a little better. There have been times when the focus hotspot (usually in the middle of the observed picture) has missed completely and decided to focus to infinity producing a blurred main character but perfect backgrounds, very annoying if you have a fidgety sitter (usually kids or pets).

The camera uses Sony's Memory Stick to hold the image data (you get an 8mg stick when you buy the camera) which can hold about six 1600x1200 images before getting full which in my opinion is a bit poor. Watch out for the prices of these memory sticks, they are expensiv
e. But unless you're going to be away from your PC for long periods of time this should not be too much of a problem as Sony has one of the easiest transfer methods available. Once you've installed the Sony software on your PC its a case of just plugging the camera into one of your USB ports and your images appear on your Desktop as a removable HD icon... Simply drag them off to your permanent HD for later retrieval.

One nice touch is that the camera records date/time information and saves it with the image data, much better than having the Date/time plastered onto your photo.

All in, the Sony DSC-S50 is great for taking bog standard snaps with a quality that will amaze you. Don't use it for a holiday trip, as the low memory stick capacity with have you pulling teeth and don't expect to take any sporting shots, its just not that kind of camera...

Summary: