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Sony MVCCD300 3MP Digital Camera w/ 3x Optical Zoom

Sony MVCCD300 3MP Digital Camera w/ 3x Optical Zoom

List Price: $1,099.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: AWESOME!...
Review: I was hoping that this camera was good enough that I could throw away my SLR and stop paying for film and developing. Unfortunately, after using it for four months now, I can say that it's not that good.

Here's the problem... the pictures all come out blue. The only way to correct for that is to use a flash, and then all the pictures come out in stark glaring color. It is impossible to get good light balance in the photos. And the camera always insists on using the flash, even when outside.

Other problems include time -- You can't just point and click... the camera has to think before taking the picture, so you ALWAYS lose the candid shots and instead get pictures of the backs of people's heads. Sometimes it can take up to ten seconds before the camera actually takes the picture... and I have no idea why. A similar but unrelated problem is disk-access. After you take a picture, it has to save it to the disk, and that can take five or more seconds, in which time you can't do anything.

On the good side, the camera captures an incredible amount of detail. You could probably print poster-sized pictures and still not see any pixelization. It is remarkable.

To sum up: If they can fix the color/light problems and processing time problems, then we might have a winner. Until then, I'll have get used to pictures of the backs of people's heads, in blue.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Pretty Good, but don't throw away your SLR
Review: I was hoping that this camera was good enough that I could throw away my SLR and stop paying for film and developing. Unfortunately, after using it for four months now, I can say that it's not that good.

Here's the problem... the pictures all come out blue. The only way to correct for that is to use a flash, and then all the pictures come out in stark glaring color. It is impossible to get good light balance in the photos. And the camera always insists on using the flash, even when outside.

Other problems include time -- You can't just point and click... the camera has to think before taking the picture, so you ALWAYS lose the candid shots and instead get pictures of the backs of people's heads. Sometimes it can take up to ten seconds before the camera actually takes the picture... and I have no idea why. A similar but unrelated problem is disk-access. After you take a picture, it has to save it to the disk, and that can take five or more seconds, in which time you can't do anything.

On the good side, the camera captures an incredible amount of detail. You could probably print poster-sized pictures and still not see any pixelization. It is remarkable.

To sum up: If they can fix the color/light problems and processing time problems, then we might have a winner. Until then, I'll have get used to pictures of the backs of people's heads, in blue.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Liked camera, Sony service lacking
Review: I've had this camera for 8 months and the drive has gone out. Sony will replace it under it's parts warranty, but I have to pay a minimum of [money] for labor. This is not my idea of a decent warranty. I've done absolutely nothing to break the drive, I consider this a fault with the camera. I don't feel that I should have to pay the money on a [money] to have the drive replaced. Sony has not seen things my way...yet. I DID like this camera, found it easy to use, took great pictures, the zoom was great, and it was super easy to download pictures. I am not at all happy with the service or reliability.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Liked camera, Sony service lacking
Review: I've had this camera for 8 months and the drive has gone out. Sony will replace it under it's parts warranty, but I have to pay a minimum of [money] for labor. This is not my idea of a decent warranty. I've done absolutely nothing to break the drive, I consider this a fault with the camera. I don't feel that I should have to pay the money on a [money] to have the drive replaced. Sony has not seen things my way...yet. I DID like this camera, found it easy to use, took great pictures, the zoom was great, and it was super easy to download pictures. I am not at all happy with the service or reliability.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Everything you need in a camera
Review: I've never gone wrong buying Sony products EVER. This is just another great purchase. The images are stunning, even in the smaller, standard resolutions. Why CD? For me, it's the final destination for the image. I don't need to go from memory stick and burning it to A CD. Besides, the CD's for this camera is only 3 inches in dia., and 99 cents if bought in bulk. The only knock I have against it is the image on the LCD screen. In daylight, I can barely make out the picture. I wonder if this is how they'll make us buy the optional clip-on eye-level viewfinder for 79 bucks. Everything else about this camera is just right. But how about 8 megapixels? That would be nice.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Decent camera
Review: Its a nice camera. The tech support is good, they directed me in setting up the USB connection. See page 38 of the manual. One problem I have noticed is with the ACC jack which is used to connect the external flash or tripod. With only one jack on the camera, you can only connect one of these accessories at any given time. In other words, if you purchase the remote tripod and the external flash, you can not shoot a picture using both the flash and remote handle on the tripod at the same time. There should have been either, two jacks or a dual connector. Before you try using a "y" connector, I have already been warned by Sony that "it won't work". I have had a nightmare of a time in ordering accessories through Sony. They are having serious problems getting the order information straight. Two orders have been fouled up and about two and one-half hours of my time wasted on the telephone. They do not correct orders that they mess up; you have to reorder and just bite the bullet. Otherwise its a good purchase except that they could have had a hot foot so you could use an alternative external flash instead of theirs which can only be connected by its cable into the single ACC camera jack, which you thought you could plug their tripod into.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Outstanding - An excellent value.
Review: My wife gave me my MVC-CD300 for my birthday. It arrived just in time for our 4th of July family reunion. I took 450 pictures over 5 days and had only one that was not a keeper (credit camera, not photographer). The camera allows you to not only review your shots, but to zoom up to 5X to really check out the details of the photos you've taken. Each evening we would hook the camera up to the TV with the RCA cable (included) and set the camera on "Slide Show". It was so much better than I imagined, beautiful high-resolution photographs of the day automatically displayed for everyone to enjoy (and critique). When the week was over I downloaded slide show software from CyPics and burned a CD for everyone to have all 450 pictures at a cost of less than a dollar per CD. Plus, they can insert the pictures into Word for cropping and printing with almost no effort at all. I have yet to use the USB cable since it is no problem to just use my pc's CD drive. I had planned to archive my photos on the camera's small CD, but it is so easy to copy them to the hard drive and burn a larger CD with about 800 photographs that I have gone to using the rewriteable CDs in the camera. I use the 2nd highest resolution on the MVC-CD300 and get about 150 shots per CD and they give excellent 8x10 prints. The cost per shot (including archiving) is almost nothing, so you feel totally free to snap away. You couldn't ask for a better combination of features.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Up and Running with Storage to Spare
Review: Sony's CD300 is one of the easiest cameras I have ever used. It was a short time from opening the box to being able to point and shoot high quality images and to store these images in large quantities. I read criticism of the size of this camera. It is not a big camera to handle. The biggest problem is keeping greasy fingers off of the LCD screen. You will want to add the hood viewer option if you plan on working outside in bright sunlight or if you want more control over framing your images. You can use the camera in an automatic exposure mode or take manual control. The read-only storage gives you the same picture taking capabilities as any film camera. The read-write capability gives you the added ability to remove and reshoot. The camera stores at least as quickly as other Mavicas and you have the ability to take burst shots in groups of three. So unless you are making a still frame movie of rabbits racing, you should find no problems using the Sony CD 300.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Loved it but ready to leave it...
Review: This is a great camera in most respects. It's hard to take a bad shot -- as someone who wouldn't be able to deal with all the adjustments on a real SLR, this seems to be the next best thing... good lens but the camera does the work as though its a point-and-shoot. I've taken 1000s of shots with it. Battery life is fine. CD as storage is rather convenient.

BUT, my complaint is the lag times. Power on lag, shutter lag, and shot-to-shot lag. It's painful to think of all the shots we've missed waiting for disc writing, or power on, or slow shutters. The Burst 3 mode is a silly answer -- just doesn't work right in practice. You can't even see the subject to know if you're still lined up once it starts bursting.

Net: this is an ideal camera for non-moving situations... sunsets come to mind. Not so much for taking shots of kids, which I do.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Loved it but ready to leave it...
Review: This is a great camera in most respects. It's hard to take a bad shot -- as someone who wouldn't be able to deal with all the adjustments on a real SLR, this seems to be the next best thing... good lens but the camera does the work as though its a point-and-shoot. I've taken 1000s of shots with it. Battery life is fine. CD as storage is rather convenient.

BUT, my complaint is the lag times. Power on lag, shutter lag, and shot-to-shot lag. It's painful to think of all the shots we've missed waiting for disc writing, or power on, or slow shutters. The Burst 3 mode is a silly answer -- just doesn't work right in practice. You can't even see the subject to know if you're still lined up once it starts bursting.

Net: this is an ideal camera for non-moving situations... sunsets come to mind. Not so much for taking shots of kids, which I do.


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