Rating: 
Summary: The P-71 has few equals in it's price range.
Review: Pros: Image quality, build quality, battery life, superb LCD
Cons: Noticable level of noise, color cast in some instancesI've owned this camera for over a year and I still love it. The build quality is superb. The battery & memory stick covers are spring loaded and snap into place snugly. I know alot more digicams are made of chic stainless steel now, but the silver plastic this camera is made of still feels sturdy IMO. The tripod mount is thankfully made of metal. The camera is well balanced and is comfortable to use. It's easy to grip & hold and 1 handed shooting is no sweat. The LCD is the sharpest and brightest I've seen(I've used an Canon A20 & Fujifil 2650 - no comparison). The menu's are easy to navigate, and almost all options are less than 2 menus deep. The thumbpad on the back of the camera is used to navigate menus in menu mode. When in shooting mode it provides a VERY handy "view last picture", flash on/off/auto, self-timer, & macro mode. All controls are easily accesible and seem very intuitive to me. The 3x zoom is very responsive & precise. No lens cover is needed because lens protectors automatically close. Image quality is excellent. When viewed on your monitor, the details & sharpness is extraordinary. I took a gag shot of a friends open mouth full of brocolli she was chewing and when I viewed the shot later, I could see incredible detail in the brocolli, down to each stalk. Color is very accurate in most situations. Outdoor shooting produced superb images. Shooting at night maybe produce images with slightly noticable noise sometimes. Shooting in cold weather & when the camera is first turned on may eliminate most of the noise. Incandescent light can cast a yellow tint and fluorescent lighting can cast a green tint on images, as with most digicam. The auto settings is accurate 99% of the time in my experience. The camera offers some manual controls(ISO, exposure comp, white balance), but it lacks an adjustable shutter speed. The night scene option will keep the shutter open for up to 2 seconds. To take pictures in brighter conditions with longer shutter times(to induce blurring or whatnot), I use the night option and lock the auto focus on a dark area by pressing the button halfway down. I then aim at my original shot and press it the rest of the way. Overall I'd say this camera is almost unrivaled in it's price range. The Canon Powershot A20 & Fujifilm Finepix 2650, althought $...-$... cheaper, comes nowhere close to the build & image quality. I have yet to use the Fujifilm Finepix 3800 which is in the same price range as the P-71, but I've heard that that camera is an excellent buy. Too bad it wasn't available when I purchased my P-71 or I might be writing about a Fuji :).
Rating:
Summary: Simple all around good digital camera.
Review: Simply put, this camera is simple! Sure it has some cons, like the movie mode not featuring audio. Or the fact that it doesn't come with an AC power cord. But for a digital camera, it gives you a no bull layout. An easy to use menu and not too many bells and whistels. It really isn't much more complex than your nice medium sized film camera. i highly recomend for pictures NOT requiring PERFECT quality. that doesnt mean it won't blow you away with good pictures. great for the standard photographer. a nice camera to use a a substitute to a nice film camera. take this one into consideration!
Rating: 
Summary: Decent camera... has its drawbacks...
Review: Sony has just about infiltrated every electronic marketplace possible and the digital camera sector is no exception. When I was researching to buy a camera, it came down to the Canon A40 vs. the Sony DSC P71. I went with the Sony because it was smaller and I didn't want to carry around the larger Canon. I wonder now if I made a mistake as Canon cameras are constantly being raved about. The P71 being my first digital camera it would be unfair to say I was disappointed. It has a decent zoom 3x Optical and 2x digital. The form factor of the camera is a huge plus. It's very small and light and easy to carry in a jacket pocket. The LCD is 1.5" more than large enough to see images clearly. The 3.2 megapixels has allowed me to develop beautiful, clear 5 x 7 photos. Even the 8 x 10 pictures come out very well. The strength of Sony digital cameras lies in taking outdoor pictures. The colors in natural sunlight are vibrant and clear. The pictures taken outdoors always come out beautiful - especially in areas where flowers, trees, and grass are present.
I have seen very few digital cameras that take nicer outdoor pictures than the Sony P71. The navigation is very intuitive even if the buttons are a little small. Sometimes I find it hard to find the center "ok" button - I often accidentally slip my finger to the right or left. When going through pictures taken already, the preview images render very quickly on the LCD. The camera offer a plethora of options for shutter speed, contrasting, picture quality and resolution, as well as view. Battery life is good. I can go through a 64 MB memory stick at high resolution on one set of batteries (and flash). Sony also provides a free set(2) of rechargeable batteries and a charger with this camera. This is a very very nice addition and accessory for this price. I bought an extra set of rechargeable batteries to keep as a spare (one set always charges while the other set is being used). Also provided is a USB cable to hook up to your computer to download images. This is an extremely easy set up with Windows XP - just plug the USB cable into your computer and camera and XP automatically recognizes your new hardware. You don't need to install the provided software if your computer already has a default picuture viewer. Now the reasons this camera received just 3 stars: 1) Remember how I mentioned that this camera takes great outdoor pictures? Well as great as the outdoor pictures are, the indoor pictures are as equally horrible. I don't know if it's the flash or Sony's interpretation of artificial light, but every single indoor picture is dark with an orange tint. They are clear, but the coloring is always off. It's like I'm looking at pictures through sunglasses. 2) I wish Sony would have configured this camera to leave the flash on when I turn it on. The default setting for the flash is always "off" so when you turn the flash on and the camera is idle for a minute, it turns itself off and sets the flash to the off position. This wouldn't be annoying if it didn't take the camera so long to re-initiate the flash. It takes a good 5-7 seconds to re-initiate. Furthermore, what would make most sense would be if the camera just sensed when the flash was needed and turned it on itself. That's what most cameras do. So there you have it - a layman's review of the Sony P71. I'm not a hobbyist or a professional photographer, I just use the camera for fun to basically record memories. The Sony P71 is an decent camera. If you take a lot of indoor pictures, stay away from it, otherwise, it will serve its purpose.
Rating: 
Summary: Better than Film and not Quite as good
Review: Summary - the most camera I could find for [the price] in a small hanld held size. Lots of useful features. I am very satisfied with it as an artist tool. For landscapes less lens would be too far away, for blow up pics, less mega-pixels would be to grainy. The Good. Unlike film cameras, this camera produces all hues of the color wheel correctly. It also records a larger range of darks and lights. As an artist I have paid for professional studio shots of my watercolor paintings that are not as good as this camera. These qualities are mostly a function of digital vs. film camera. All camera films have color bias and less value range than what a painting can have. However, even among digital cameras there can be some color bias, this one has perfect balance. Also it can see into shadow areas revealing details better than most film cameras. With 3 meg Pixels it produces 4x6 inch pictures at 340 pdi on a printer, very sharp. Posters and magazine are printed at 150 dpi for this camera that would be about a 8x10 print, they still look better. It has an amazing macro lens with a tulip icon. I took very close and very sharp pictures of tulips with it. Other subjests may work well, I don't know yet. It is packed with lots options like White Balance for cloudy days, very helpfull in Seatle. Other good features are manual focus, noise reduction, and in low contrst situations when the autofocus feature is confused it sends out a a flash to see the subject and get a fix, all cameras should have this feature. The not so good. Some low contrast areas have speckles in them at about the grainness level of ISO 400 film. This is very slight and most people will not notice. It also may be a factor of the "PaintShop Pro" software translation to the HP 1220 printer, because this graininess does not show up on the monitor. Even with 3x optical zoom distant objects like Mt. Rainier show up at about 90 percent of their actual size, though this is pretty good at this price. Note 3x optical zoom cameras are not all alike. I depends on 3 times what size you start with. A Kodak 3x camera gives a much shaller or distant picture. It comes with out a camera case and a slow battery charger, 13 hrs. But Sony gives you a $20 coupon towards buying a kit with a case, batteries and a fast charger 2hrs. for $40. You really want to have spare battieries and a charger that recharge them as fast as you can use them up.
Rating:
Summary: good camera for an amateur or a more advanced photographer
Review: The first problem I noticed after buying the camera, was its hunger for battery power; I used up my batteries in less than 10 minutes (LCD screen turned on). Later on I realized that the reason for this, was the quality of the batteries I used (cheap ones). Finally, I charged up the included Ni-MH AA batteries, and was able to shoot pictures for much longer, even with the LCD screen.
As for the resolution, it is very satisfactory for a camera of that price, with that many functions. In fact, I dont even use the maximum size too often, the smaller sizes of the pics are enough for a good quality shot.
A good thing about this camera, is that you can use it as both a manual-settings, and an "idiot-machine". It has good auto-focus, even in dark areas (with the AF-Illuminator turned on). If you're using autofocus, all you need to do is press the shooting button half way, and in about 2 seconds, the lens will adjust itself, to form clear, sharp pictures. If you want to play around with the settings, you can define the distance between the camera and the object you're photographing.
The camera also offers ISO, EV, WHITE BALANCE, FLASH LEVEL, and SHARPNESS settings. So as you can see, you can get many different results with all these settings available.
Transfering the pictures to the computer is rather easy. I have WinXP pro, so as soon as I plugged in the included USB cable, the computer recognized it, and automatically installed it. I didn't even have to use the included Driver CD. I also tested it using Win98SE, works good as well, but you will need to use the drivers on the CD. In WinXP, you will be able to use a special wizard which will automatically rename the pictures for you, and put them in a certain folder. In Win98, the camera will appear as a removable-drive (it will also appear in XP) and you will have to copy the pictures manually.
One of the reasons I bought this camera, is its size. Sure there are other cameras even smaller, but this one offers great picture quality, and many manual settings (even effects like B&W, Solarize, Sepia, Invert). I often carry it in my pocket, but you might want to get the carrying case, especially if you want to avoid scratches.
A great option available in this camera, is the ability to shoot movies. It offers three resolutions: 160x112, 320x240, and 320(HQX). I dont know what HQX stands for, but it sure improves the quality of the movie. The one thing that really bothers me, is the lack of sound recording while shooting a movie. It's a big minus, but the main reason I bought it was shooting PICTURES, not MOVIES, so I won't complain much.
Sony didn't include an AC cable, but instead you will get a battery charger (the batteries they included are rechargeable, so you'll save lots of money). You will also get a cable that will let you view the pictures on a regular TV.
Another big minus, is the use of MemoryStick. The reason? It's less popular than other cards, and it's more expensive. Sony includes a 16mb card, just as most other companies. With the lowest picture quality, you will be able to get 240 pictures on this card. Using the highest quality, you will get about 15 shots.
Overall, I am very satisfied with this camera, and I recommend it to anyone else interested in more advanced photography.
Rating:
Summary: Great Camera, easy to use, yet it does a lot of things
Review: The Sony cyber-shot P71 is an exelent camera. It is extremly easy to use, and yet the things it does is endles. The camera comes with rechargable batteries and charger, an 18 mb card, a wrist strap, and software. There is one thing else that you need. A bigger memory card. There is no backing down from it. I got a 64 mb card, and it is great. I can do movies for about 30 minutes! Although it is not a camcorder, it is so much fun to make movies.I was worried about the picture quality. It turned out that I worried for nothing. 3.2 megapixels is great.All of the controls are in the right place. The zoom is better then I thaught. Since the picture quality goes down when you use digital zoom. the camera tells you when you zoom in over optical zoom, and are now using digital zoom as well. Putting pictures on your computer is easy. I have windows XP home edition, and I find that XP makes it even eaiser to se your pictures. A lot of cameras also need an expensive USB driver for the computer to read yor memory card. But the USB driver is built right into the camera, so you can just hook up tour camera to the computer. Overall, this camera is a great camera, with great pictures as well as many cool features. Its great!
Rating:
Summary: SWEET!
Review: This camera is the most amazing camera I've touched! Crystal clear pictures! This camera lets you film too. It comes w/ a 16mb memory stick but I've upgraded to a 64mb so I can take a ton of pictures or capture a lot of film! There are many many features that are easy to use. The other day I showed pictures that I just took on my camera to my brother on my parents big screen television w/ the video out cord that comes w/ the camera. You won't be dissapointed!
Rating:
Summary: Great Easy-to-Use Camera
Review: This camera is very easy to use. The AutoFocus and illumination work very well, and the image quality is excellent. Transferring pictures to my computer was also very easy. I used the included USB cable to connect to my PC, and copied the pictures over just like I was copying any other file on my PC. I would recommend getting a larger memory stick than the one included (128 MB sticks are available) so that you can store more pictures at a time, and I would also buy an extra set of rechargeable batteries.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Digital Camera
Review: This is a v.good Camera , It is my first Digital.It is very easy to use , In the beg. i thought it would be complicated , but with the manual you can easly do anything with this Sony.
Get 128 MB memory Card , and you no longer need your laptop with you to transfer images to empty the memory card.
Shooting movies is fun though missing SOUND.
Battery lasts until you charge them back.
Rating:
Summary: Great Product
Review: This is my first digital camera & I have been using it for over one year. I use it for both my business & vacations. It is very easy to use (especially for beginers). It is also great because there is never any film to develop (for those of us who forget to drop it off or pick it up). It has some wonderful features like color or black & white, the buttons are easy to use & the instructions are great. The viewfinder on the back is very clear & choice of image size is great. In addition to the camera I would purchase a tripod and an additional memory stick (128MB is a great price at amazon.com). If it is still available the starter pack with case, battery charger, etc... is also a good choice.
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