Customer Reviews

Sony Cybershot DSC-T70 8.1MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom with Super Steady Shot Image Stabilization (White)

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

PRETTY IN PINK
I own a professional camera (Canon EOS 1D Mark III) so it was bit of an embarrassment to seek a camera for my wife that was "cute" (1st criteria), "slim" (2nd criteria), and "pink" (third criteria). For these three criteria, there is no substitute other than the T70 from Sony.

POOR PERFORMANCE
The camera performs very well in great conditions (sunny, bright days) but suffers when lighting is compromised (darkness, incandescent or fluorescent lighting). This is largely based on the camera's inability to modify white balance to accommodate the strong colour hues given in artificial light.

TOUCH SCREEN
The touch-screen menu is not entirely intuitive but it is high on the "cool factor" (no buttons to press, it's mostly touch-screen).

SMILE
Also amazing (although more in an hilarious way than a cool way) is the smile technology where the camera only takes the picture when people are smiling. It seems this only works when you have the "cheesiest" smile ever. You need to be showing all your teeth (including your molars!) to get the camera to take a picture. Our family laughed about this for an hour as we were all screaming "cheese". My wife (who normally refuses to smile for the camera) was being as cheesy as ever! This feature is a bit silly and impractical but it can be fun.

MEMORY DUO STICK
Another factor with this camera is it's use of the Memory Duo for photo storage. This is a proprietary Sony item, and appears to be destined to the same history as Beta Video tapes (ie. premature obsolescence). Memory is cheap (we bought a 2GB card for $30) but you are unlikely to already have this card from a previous camera unless you are a Sony person. You should also check that you have a card reader (for more efficient transfer of images) on your computer.

8.1 MP TOO MUCH!
Lastly, the 8.1 MP is great, but the optics and image quality aren't worthy of this MP size. I would suggest that you are wasting memory and time shooting at full size. You will not lose much (if any) discernible quality by shooting at 5MP.

OTHER OPTIONS
Before you consider this camera, I would suggest looking at the Canon A720IS or Canon A560. The camera are not as "cool" but the image quality will be remarkable. My son's graduation pictures (from kindergarten) were wasted using the "cute" camera and nothing will recapture that moment.

I want to love this camera, but just can't for the simple fact that indoor/lower light pictures just look terrible. This is for two reasons. One the camera bumps the ISO settings too high, causing noise. Two, this causes the noise filter to try to correct the problem, but it just winds up making everyone looked smeared.

The face detection seems to work well, tracking up to 8 faces as long as they are looking at the camera directly. Smile detection on the other hand was pretty spotty, and I could only get it to work reliably with very cheezy smiles.

The huge touchscreen on the back is definitely a wow factor when people see this camera. It's bright and clear, and is very impressive as it takes up the entire back of the camera. The touchscreen itself made me nervous because when you press on it, the LDC below is squished, causing the screen to momentarily change colors. You would never see this on a PDA. Perhaps a better choice would have been a glass backing for the screen, or even better, use the same technology as the iphone's screen. For the most part the interface is pretty good, but simple tasks such as turning off the flash, or switching to macro mode take too many touches.

Pros:
- Great styling
- Face detection
- Touchscreen is nice, screen is big and bright
- Image stabilizer works well

Cons:
- Image quality is terrible
- Smile detection needs some work
- Too many touches to get complete simple tasks
- Zoom button is hard to get to, impossible for one handed operation.
- Only takes memory stick, SD would have been better (granted this is a Sony so I really don't expect anything less)
- Would have been nice if it took AA batteries.

Bottom line:
I love the look of this camera, and the touchscreen allows for the camera to have very few physical buttons. However, the gimmicks wears off quickly.
Ultimately, I took this camera back to the store for a Canon SD850(see my other review) because the image quality was unacceptable. If you shoot any pictures in low light or indoors picture quality will suffer.

I got this because of the good reviews by Cnet on the sister T-100 camera. The touchscreen is fun to use and great to review pictures with friends. However, the pictures are terrible. Especially in low light conditions. There is blur (even with the anti-shake) and the pics are grainy. The reason is that this camera boosts the ISO in low light. There is no point to having a 3200 ISO if the pics are grainy. Also, the flash range is limited (expected in an ultracompact). Most of the time you don't need 8MP because a small size pic will suffice to view on the monitor. My buddy's $100 Olympus FE 190 takes better pics! Bottom line: Bad pics make this a no-go.

This is my 3rd digital Camera, prior to this I got T100. I found it cheaper on price and higher on quality and features as compare to other sony digital cameras. If you are going to buy T200, you may consider this camera, this is thinner, smaller then T200 and has almost same functions and features except few like t200 has 3.5" LCD which is bigger then this camera but to be very frank I really don't want a bigger screen, 3" LCD is fair on this model. Other then this T200 has 5x zoom but T70 has 3x only, which I don't bother at all because 3x and 5x is not a big difference for zoom. Rest all the things are same on T70, T75, T200, so I would suggest you to go for T70 because of very price difference it about 100$. Yes its other features are good 8.1mp, Slim, Stylish. Black color is really nice, I love it.

I have had this camera for about 3 weeks now. I struggled between the t200, the t70 and the Canon 800IS or 870IS. I eventually Purchased the t70. At first I wasn't sure if I was satisfied... The touch screen made me nervous, and I wasn't all that fond of the menu set up, and for the first few days it seemed like it made a better conversation piece that a functional pocket camera! Well, I bought a fancy "just-fit" leather case for it, but I only kept it in there for a couple of days, then I moved to just carrying it in my pocket (I did buy screen protectors AND bought the $60.00 Sony complete coverage insurance) and I must say it is a PERFECT pocket camera. I had the Canon 600 Elph before this, and I like this camera much better.

The controls are a bit awkward at first, but once you calibrate the touch screen to your fingers once or twice, and you begin playing with all the options till they are memorized, you will be a whiz at the touch screen and it DOES make things much easier and faster to get to.

The speed of it is great, i can grab this thing from my pocket, flip down the cover and have a flash photo in less than 2 seconds!!

The quality of the photos is superb, the only thing that I would gripe about is the Auto-WB (not as good as my old canon) But, there is a Flash-WB which is fantastic when using the flash.

The preset scene stuff is pretty nice, even though I prefer to use mine in manual mode. I have taken the same picture in my own manual settings and then compared them to the preset scene settings (pics at twilight/evening mostly) and to be honest, the presets are pretty darn good!

The manual settings are pretty much the same you will get with any digicam. The F-stop is controlled by the zoom when on manual, and the shutter speed by the exposure setting.

One awesome thing on this camera is the ability to turn the flash down or up! The normal flash is decent, but kind of weak if you are trying to get things more than 10 feet from you in an incandescent room, but putting the flash to high power gives you perfect illumination.

The IS is pretty decent, it is not like an SLR IS thats for sure, but you can definitely tell the difference!!

The major con on this thing is that it just seems kind of fragile. I am dreading the first time I drop this thing. My old canon could take a beating!! This one doesn't seem like it would survive the antics that the old 600 Elph did. But, for $60.00 the complete coverage is a bargain, and you dont have to buy it FROM sony to get it!

So, overall this is a really nice quick pocket camera. For a $300 camera you are going to get very nice quality photos, very fast reaction time, and a very stylish camera to whip out of your pocket and catch that moment with. It has a whole lot of fancy photo-editing stuff on it that I don't use. The one thing I wish it did have is the ability to pick "My colors" like Canon, but oh well. The smile shutter is sort of cool I guess, probably better if you have kids.

I am happy I purchased the Sony t70. The t200 was too heavy and did not have a good center of gravity, plus that touch screen made me even more nervous! and it is unnecessarily large. The Canons are great cameras, but they are a bit clunkier than the t70 and I like the non-telescoping lens in the Sony.

Really wanted a red sony t200 but after going into a store to look at it it was too big for my pocket and not as small as the silver T70 which has all the same items I was looking for just a smaller screen and 3X zoom and not 5Xzoom.

So went home and checked amazon and bought a white one, for nearly 100 bucks less the the T200, I have now been using it for weeks and the pictures come out amazing,,,,,I will post some here.......

I am very happy!

I purchased this camera after about 2 months of research on every camera out there. I Love this camera, but I only gave it 4 stars for the following reasons:
1. The product manual doesn't really tell you how to use the camera and the tons of functions.
2. The touch screen is incredible. It can get a little overwhelming because one minute you can find a specific setting or function but when you go back to look for it again, you can't.
3. It would be nice if the manual would help out with setting suggestions for taking pics.
4. Many people say that this camera takes bad pics, but I have found that you really need to get to know the settings and flash controls.
5. The software that comes with this is a bit confussing. I was on Kodak easyshare before buying the Sony Cybershot DSC-T70. The Kodak Easyshare software is WWWAAAAYYYY easier for everything. Sony would be smart to look at Kodak's software and make changes to there software.
6. The flash is way too brite. A photographer friend of mine recommended taking a small piece of scotch tape (clear-frosted) and put it over the flash. This made a world of differance!

Overall, this is a fantastic camera! It has taken me a few weeks to get used to the settings, but I'm really glad that I didn't give up. No product out there is going to be perfect and everything is always going to upset someone, but this one is worth the time to get to know. I love that you can edit pics on the camera however, I can't figure out how to edit on the Sony software... One more recommendation, DO NOT use the red eye function. I have had better pics not using this feature than with it.

This is my 4th Sony Camera, and the best. I still own a W-5 and a W-7 both of which are very good cameras. I wanted a smaller camera, so last year I bought a Sony N-2. I didn't like it. Because of its small size, I had trouble holding it steady. It didn't have Steady Shot. Sold it on E-Bay! This camera solves the problem plus is easier to use and has more features. I Love It!

I call this the perfect "teen" camera. I bought this for my teenage daughter, and she loves it. It has all of the "cute" bells and whistles that would appeal to a creative high school student, such as the stylus that allows her to write graffiti on pictures or the frame tool that allows her to add stylish frames to the pics. And just when you started to think that this might be more of a toy than a camera, it will "wow" you with it's incredibly sharp and color-true photos. It's a thin, light-weight camera ... it can go anywhere. And even pros will be suprised by the photo quality. It's a winner.

I bought this amazing camera on october, and all i can say is that it works perfect. the touch screen is very responsive, yet, they need to improve the interface a little bit in order to make it even more easy to use. I went to the miami seaquarium and I was impressed because it took pretty nice pictures when the dolphins were moving, it didn't lose any detail. It has a lot of features, including face detection and smile shutter (simply amazing).... I fully recomend this one. It's really thin...