Rating: Summary: Dissapointed in this camera Review: I bought this camera because of the 5 mpxl feature, hoping it would take good pictures. I have been very dissapointed in its performance so far. The problem is there are many issues affecting picture quality other than raw pixel count, and the bottom line is that this camera does not take very good pictures, particularly indoor. You can control almost everything on the camera, except the shutter speed. The shutter speed is chosen by the camera, and indoors, shutter speeds of 1/30 second is used, even with the flash. You simply can not hold the camera still enough to get a good picture at this shutter speed. This makes the camera perform poorly for indoor events like birthday parties. The flash is underpowered for the camera, and the flash is too close to the lens, leading to unavoidable red-eye on indoor pictures. I have an older 1 megapixel cameral made by epson that was half the cost and takes much better pictures indoors. I would suggest buying a camera from a brand with better understanding of photography, such as cannon, olympus or nikon.The software that comes with the camera is completely useless, and I had to buy third party software to just nominally be able to use the pictures. At the price of this camera, you would expect feature rich, usable software. I would recommend not buying this camera until Sony offers better software, and better indoor photo capabilities.
Rating: Summary: Foget about buying this camera Review: I bought this camera in December 2003 for my boyfriend as a Christmas gift. I bought it because of the good review, all the features, light weight, small and most of all because is a 'SONY' First we were pretty impressed with it. The only problem we had was the standard memory card given was way to small. We can take only about 30 shot each time. Then after a month the picture turn blurry and fuzzy sometimes. So far we took only 250 pictures with it. Then last month the flash gave up on us. We read the manual and tried to fix the problem but nothing help. We call the SONY help line and they can't solved the problem either. If we want to get it repair we have to send it all the way to TEXAS as they don't have any customer service or repair technician here in LA or California. And it will cost us $171.00 excluding S/H for the workmanship. What made me mad was I paid $420.00 for this camera and it is not cheap. I expected much more from this camera for the amount I paid. If the camera cost only $200.00 I won't be so heart sick about it. We decided not to repair it because with the cost of the repair we can buy a BRAND NEW CAMERA that works much better than a "SONY'. So to everyone out there who wanted to buy one 'THINK TWICE'. To SONY hope you will improve on your product.
Rating: Summary: Good while it lasted Review: Let me begin by saying that I have bought into Sony's proprietary technology for quite a while now. As an owner of a Vaio desktop, a Clie handheld and a Sony Digital HandyCam, it was obvious that when it came time to upgrade to a quality digital still camera, I was going to buy a Sony Cybershot. So after reviewing the options, which at the time consisted only of the P10, the V1 and the then-new U series of super compacts, I chose this model in the spring of 2004. Initially, my experience was good. I was upgrading from the 1MP camera that was part of my Sony Digital HandyCam so the image quality to me was astounding.
Other advantages were:
- Easy point & shoot right out of the box...it did not require my wife to read the manual in order to begin taking stills.
- Unlike my previous digital still experiences, this camera performs well in low-light situations. The integrated flash is capable of lighting small rooms.
- Battery capacity is ample and the features, although some difficult to use, are comprehensive.
Disadvantages:
- STARTUP TIME...don't expect this camera to be able to power-up and take a candid shot within 8-10 seconds. By the time you get this puppy ready to fire, the moment is gone.
- The menu tree is cumbersome and not altogether intuitive. Changing advanced settings is difficult unless all you want to do is switch modes (Program AE, etc.)
- As with most still cameras (Sony & the like), the included MemoryStick is way too small. So the purchase of an additional MS is obligatory.
My biggest beef with this camera, and the reason it earns only two stars is that it seems FRAGILE. After only 5-6 months of use, it began to occasionally have startup/shutdown problems. By the end of 2004 (~9 months of use) the auto focus was beginning to fail on a regular basis. Now, outside the 6-month warranty window, I am forced to pay $200 to $300 for LABOR ALONE to have the camera fixed, parts still covered under the original warranty. But still, this is a cost prohibitive solution.
So now I am at the crossroads with my Sony products. My PDA is approaching the end of its useful life and I find myself without a digital still camera that is capable of taking any pictures in focus -- remember the cyber-shots do not provide for manual focus. Perhaps it is time to consider a Canon product or other comparible vendor?
Rating: Summary: nice pictures but broken after 4 months Review: Right after the warranty expires, the camera will no longer charge the battery.
Of course I can ship the camera to Sony for repair, and ALL I have to pay is labor!
I recommend buying another camera or alternatively buy the extended warranty.
Rating: Summary: Purchase something else.... Review: I've had my sony camera for over a year. I first bought it because with a 256MB chip I could get an 11 Minute movie that I could transfer to VHS. For the price I paid at the time $499, I should have bought a video camera. In my opinion the camera it's self really isn't anything to write home about. The lens is junk, my pictures always are pixelated. Compare a Sony picture with an Olympus, Minolta, or Canon, even with a lower amount of Megapixels the quality will beat sony at the highest setting. And if you reduce the Megapixels with Sony the images just degrades and the shutter speed is horrible. If a person moves slitely there is a blur. My choice after seeing and talking to friends is 1) Minolta 2) Olympus 3)Canon ... though the Canon is getting better and better with their newer rechargable battery. Anything else other than these is pretty much a gamble I wouldn't take...
Rating: Summary: Buy it for the right reasons ...... Review: I bought this Camera (which was my first) in March 2004 , so I've had it for 8 months .
First of all ,make sure that when you buy it , know that you're buying a high-end multi-media AMATEUR camera , not even a starting point PRO camera ... and that makes a huge difference.
Almost all of the negative reviews are either because of lack of experience in camera settings , and/or high expectations for not knowing enough about digital cameras and lens mechanisms .
The reason I bought this camera was because I was taking a long 6 month trip to India , Egypt , Syria , so I had a lot of exotic scenes and memorable moments to capture , I'm not a National Geographic photographer , so I just needed something small , elegant , handy with good quality .
Upon buying it , I raced to the next store to buy a Multimeida Pro 256 Mb memory card , the camera is otherwise literally useless with the bundled 32 Mb card ,I also bought a soft black case .
Well after going to three countries in the Third World , I can say that I'm very satisfied , the camera never failed me once .
As for the picture quality / flash /blurriness /shutter speed , there are enough reviews that resolve these issues , make sure you take the time to read up on the options and settings .
A friend has the Nikon Coolpix 4500 4.5 MP digital camera , he bought it a year before me , and his pics' quality are much better than mine , but don't let it bother you , Nikon is Nikon , SOny is Sony , Nikon is SPECIALISED in imaging and photography , the lens alone cost as much as the SONY DSCP-10 , when the 5.1 MP mode is used , unless the settings and surroundings are PERFECT the picture will be somewhat grainy .... print it on postcard size photos , or reduce the size to 90% , and you'll be ok .... if you expected a pro camera with pro 99.9999% purity lens , then you should have expected a serious financial problem .
battery life is very good , I'm yet to suffer from a problem that needed warranty (although mentioning the warranty details are useless here because I live in the UAE where Sony has a different policy)
Bottom line is : Sony DSCP-10 , does more than it should do when compared to the cameras of the same price range . It's overall very good , the small size and handling are a plus .
I highly recommend it .
Rating: Summary: Detailed Answers Review: From all the reviews that others gave for this camera, there were some inconsistent facts. Hope this review answers all those inconsistencies.
Fact 1: The camera does not support black and white pictures. HOWEVER, it supports Sephia, which is just like black and white, except instead of shades of grey, its in shades of tan color. Maybe this was added in instead of B&W because Sephia seems to look better than B&W. In any case any picture in Sephia can be converted by paint software to b&w (but you can convert color pictures to B&W using paint software too)
Fact 2: Blurry images can be eliminated by choosing the correct options. It is eliminated completely if you force the flash to happen (via option) during each picture. The flash brightness is adjustible. Blurry images happen only if the scene is bright enough and the default options automatically turns off the flash, and you can't keep the image steady. The only problem comes is when you wish to take pictures of places that are not too bright and the objects are too far away for the flash to brighten. In this case, forcing the flash to happen will remove any blurry images, but the long distant objects will be dark. For this special case, you need a steady hand or a tripod. Why do blurry images happen? Because the aperature is left open longer to gather more light for the scene. (Otherwise it becomes too dark in the picture). Any movement during the time it is open will end up being blurry. If you leave the flash on, the camera always assumes there will be enough light, so it always closes the shutter fast, removing blurry images.
Fact 3: Cool accessory to have for this camera is the 2.6X telephoto lens VCL-DH2630 (requires another separate adapter body VAD-PHA as well). It increases the total optical zoom to 7.8 times, which you will not regret having if you are taking scenic pictures.
Fact 4: The camera can take 22 minutes 37 second movies with the included 32Meg memory stick if you choose the 160 pixels wide movies. And with the default 32 megabyte memory stick, you can only take 1 minute 27 seconds of 640 pixels wide movies. Increase the stick size, you and increase the length of movies proportionally. So with 2 Gig mem stick, you get more than 24 hours of 160 pixel wide movies, and 1 and a half hour 640 pixels wide movies (length of most theatre movies). And they all include sound!
Fact 5: The camera has a deep list of features. Most of the people who use it will use the default automatic mode. There are two other modes (scenic, and programmable) you turn with the dial. It is in these other modes that you can get special features or tune your picture capturing options. The only thing you can't manually adjust is the focus, but the camera comes with many different auto-focus settings and predefined focus increments.
Fact 6: The camera takes pretty good pictures. See http://www.edepot.com/ebay.html for pictures taken with this camera.
Rating: Summary: Wonderful Camera Review: I have owned this camera for over a year and so far am very impressed with it. For the price, you can't beat the picture quality. This camera is very user friendly. Charge the battery and you are ready to go. The auto mode works so well, you very seldomly need to adjust any settings. The flash works well inside of about 25 feet and does a great job in low light situations.
It does not have all of the bells and whistles of the higher end digital cameras, but is great for non-professionals. This camera blows all other 5mp pocket cameras out of the water! Also, for those looking for even sharper images the 7mp version of this camera is coming out in October for under $500.
Rating: Summary: not good for moving object Review: shutter speed is not fast enough to capture a moving object. i took a lot picture for my son and just a few are good. and it becomes very slow recently and then finally broken last week.
Rating: Summary: BEST CAMERA EVER! Review: ok, when i had a old sony cyber-shot, it had like 1.9 MP.....and i thought it was great, so no biggy.....this camera is so much cooler, sound and a lot of other options, the shutter speed is the same as any other digital camera, and if you dont like to wait for the shutter just buy a advantix camera or something, stop complaining about it.
BEST CAMERA EVER!!!
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