Customer Reviews

Sony Cybershot DSCW1 5MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom

5 star:		(58)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

I have been very happy with this camera since I purchased it over a month ago. My requirements for a digital camera were resolution of at least 5 MP, compact size for travel, and some scene or manual modes. Two features sold me on this camera:

1. Compatibility with AA batteries. Most cameras this size use proprietary batteries, which means if you forget your battery recharger on a trip, you could be in trouble. With this camera, you can take out the included AA rechargeables once they run down and use regular AA batteries. While lithium batteries such as Energizer's E2 series are best, even alkalines will work in a pinch.

2. Larger LCD area. The extra inch makes a huge difference. You can tell immediately whether people blinked, and the screen is large enough that family and friends will enjoy flipping through the photos you've taken without having to squint. The larger area also makes it fun to zoom, rotate, and crop photos right in the camera.

In addition to indoor settings, I have tested the camera in the Colorado mountains, suburban Chicago, and downtown DC. The scene modes did an especially beautiful job with the mountains and lakes. I had been worried after some reviews suggested that Sony cameras make colors look washed-out and faded, but I did not experience this. My images have also been very sharp, and I can see details far in the background, such as signs in shots of city streets. I also like that you can set the camera to record images in a 3:2 ratio, so that if you are planning to make 4x6 prints, the camera saves exactly the image that will be printed. My only complaint is that the red-eye mode doesn't completely eliminate red eye in indoor shots, but I understand that this is typical for compact cameras.

Since this camera and its LCD screen could easily be damaged in a purse or backpack, I would recommend a semi-rigid carrying case such as Sony's LCMWA model.

This camera will not be right for everyone. If you're looking for a simple point-and-shoot and don't want to worry about settings, consider Canon's PowerShot S500 Elph. If your photos mostly will be indoors and redeye is your major concern, consider Nikon's Coolpix 5200. If you'll be doing a lot of telephoto zooming, consider the Pentax Optio 555 with its 5X optical zoom. But if you're looking for a versatile compact 5 MP camera in the advanced consumer/prosumer segment, then look no further than Sony's DSC-W1.

After reading every online review I could find, I decided to purchase the DSC-W1 and after taking about 300 images, I am quite pleased with it.

The camera is light and small. It has plenty of "scene modes" that make it easy for anyone to take a picture. You can also take 640x480 movies with sound for as long as your memory stick pro will hold them. (If you are using a regular memory stick, the time is limited.) The camera is lightning fast, both in startup time and time to store an image after shooting. There is a "burst mode" too that can allow multiple shots to be taken in succession, but it is too buried in the menus to be useful unless you know that good action is coming.

Night photography seems to be working out quite well with this camera. One thing I liked over similar cameras in this category is the 30 second exposure time, which is fairly high. (Many didn't allow anything more than 10 seconds.)

I ditched the included Sony batteries after reading a review somewhere and bought some Powerex 2300 batteries from MahaEnergy. I haven't been able to go through two sets of batteries (the camera takes two AA's.) in a day's time. In fact, one set seems to do just fine almost all of the time.

The Sony supports up to 400 iso, though there is a fair amount of noise at this level. I've been using Neat Image to clean it up though and I have no qualms about shooting at this speed as long as I'm using software to clean it up.

I'm just beginning to learn how to photograph things somewhat well, and I do have a few gripes. Most are very minor, and most would have been solved if I would have saved up the money to buy a digital SLR instead of trying to force this point and shoot to try to be a digital SLR.

First, macro mode doesn't seem to let you get very close. With my friend's Olympus Camedia, I seem to be able to all but rest my lens on the subject. With the DSC-W1, I can't seem to get much closer than 6 inches with it getting too blurry to take a picture. You can get some close shots, but if you are really looking at getting into macro photography, you might want to look at the Olympus, or at other cameras.

Night photographers will find it irritating that there is no sort of remote cable release or remote IR release. You can get around this problem with the self timer if necessary, but some shots you just aren't going to get. There isn't any sort of built-in stabilization either, though I wouldn't expect any on a $400 point and shoot. A tripod is required gear if you are going to take shots in dim light without a flash.

Also, it is worth noting that the camera doesn't have a hot-shoe. You are going to be using the built in flash. The built-in flash seems to be okay, and I'm imagining that the average point-and-shoot photographer won't care.

Overall, I'm really pleased with this camera. If you want to be really get into the technical side of digital cameras, save up and buy a Canon Digital Rebel or some other spiffy SLR. If you want a camera that you'll be happy to put in your pocket and take with you, the Sony is an excellent choice.

I bought this in Jan 2005 and I love this one. I have done quite some research before I bought this one. Some research sites recomended are
- PC World
- Steves Digital. www.steves-digicams.com
- Imaging- Resource(www.imaging-resource.com). This site has a comparometer by which you can comapare images from 2 cameras side by Side. Although thi site is little biased towards cannon as they did not use the correct settings for sony camera.

But one thing was clear from my research- Cannon Camera are the best in Image quality(I'll give 5 to Cannon on image quality and 4.8 to sony. 4.2 to Kodak, 4 to Nikon. But One ditinct advantage that made my choice to sony was the Spped of the shot. Basically sony cameras take shot between .2 -.3 seconds after the button is pressed and cannon takes 1.1 - 1.3 seconds to take the shot. With my kids it is imposiible to get a posed Picture I want with cannon.

Here are some of the feature comparison between Sony and Cannon(I ignored all others because of image quality)

1. Image quality - Sony 4.8 - Cannon 5.0. although at uptill 8x 10 the quality is same.
2. Image clarity and details - Sony 4.7 - cannon 5.0. Cannon has the lot more details. A picture of grass shows sharp edges of grass in cannon but sony is little blurry. But at 8x10 u don't need that kind of sharpness.
3. Color - Sony w1 4.9. cannon 5.0. again cannon is better but not by far. Sony P93 and P73 are worst in color but W1 does a good job and V1 and T1 are closest to true colors
4. Night shots - Sony 4.9 Cannon - 4.5. Here is the difference. Sony's shots in dark lights are the best.
5. Shot TIme. As I said earlier Sony is the best by 2-3 times better performance than any other camera. Besides startup time on Sony camera is about .3 seconds where as cannon is about 1.7 seconds. This is due to faster processor of Sony.
6. Batery Life - I could take 170+ pictures with sony using LCD and using the review mode Extensively. For cannon I don't have the numbers but I heard it is around 100 pictures(official number is 250 for both). Besides the charger is included in Sony but not in cannon using AA bateris. This saves another 30-40 bucks
7. Price - Both are same with cannons Flashs card being cheaper than sony' memory stick. But amazon.com gives 128 MB stick free which gives you 60 images at 5 MP resolution. Cannon' Battery charger for A85,95 series is going to add 40$ to your price range.
8. Noise reduction - Sony is the best. no comparison in digital processing with any other brand.
9. LCD Size- I've had couple of camcorders and trust me u need a bigger screen like W1 or else u miss details while reviewing, and while on a trip you try to take the best pictures only and delete the others.
10. Appearance and weight. All are same weight (couple of ounces here and there) but Cannon uses 4 AA bateries which makes is little more heaview and the battery torage space required in camera makes it even more bulkier(Bigger size) to carry.
11. Lens extensions. Cannon has better acceries available but I'm not professional either:)

Overall I'll say Sony is the best overall camera. Image quality compared to cannon is not the best but it is not off by far either. But If you don't care about the time taken to get the picture after button is pressed and are very hung on perfect image quality- go for cannon. But within 200-325 Price range , Sony is the best and W1 is the best in that range. It is also voted the best Point and Shoot camera by PC world(PCworld ratings are known to be best in electronics).
Summary
Sony W1 is good at.
1. Faster snap time
2. Best Night shots.
3. Very true colors(4.9 sony W1 and 5.0 to Cannon)
4. Excelent Scene Modes.
5. Decent Manual controls(You don't need them with scenic modes)
6. Very good image quality.
7. Lighter and better Look camera over all.

Cannon is good at.
1. Image quality.
2. Very true colors almost perfect.

Hope this helps

I was torn between this Sony W1 and the Canon S60, and finally bought the Sony W1 because of the attractive price and movie function. But I ended up returning it because I began to believe that for $100 more, the S60 would give me more features that I wanted.

Dont get me wrong, if you are looking for a 5MP camera at a great price for simple point-and-shoot operation with some wiggle room to grow creatively, I would highly recommend this camera. Its quick, takes good looking images and gives great bang for your buck. I however, as a graphic designer with film SLR experience, yearned for more manual options and less compressed images.

The Sony W1 is caught in 5MP camera limbo. It is bigger and has more manual features than most ultra-compact cameras like the Canon S500 Elph, but it is smaller and has less customizable features than prosumer compact models like the Canon S60. It is hard to classify the W1's true competition. If you are deciding between an S500 and the W1, go for the Sony W1. If you are deciding between the S60 and the W1, you may find that the extra $100 is worth the extra features in the Canon model, like I have found.

Here are my personal pros and cons of the Sony W1:

Pros:

- Big 2.5-inch LCD screen. Great for sharing movies and pictures right on the camera, and helps composing images. But, some annoying drawbacks (see cons).

- Max 30 second shutter speed in Manual mode. This is twice the max exposure time of most prosumer models priced hundreds more. This helps in getting creative with night shots.

- VGA 30fps movies (with Memory Stick Pro). Great movies, even in VGA 16fps. You can't use the Optical Zoom during shooting a movie, but you can set the Zoom to a specific range, then begin recording your movie at that locked Zoom setting. Also, I'm not sure if all cameras do this, but the Movie Mode actively adjusts focus AND exposure during the recording of a movie, AND you can use many still-image functions (such as Macro and Photo FX) during movie recording. However, some file size drawbacks (see cons).

- Smart Zoom digital zoom. Basically a loss-less digital zoom function available on the lower resolution settings. But, in simple terms: if you have it set on 3MP, it will capture the image at 5MP and crop the image out to make it 3MP size, giving the illusion of a zoom. It is a very handy feature, great for people who dont have expensive photo-editing software or know-how. But, if you are me, then you know you can get the same effect by taking a 5MP image, and then crop it in Photoshop.

- INCLUDED 2 rechargable AA batteries and charger. Great money saver, just buy another 4 pack of batterys to keep in rotation to recharge. Unfortunately, the batteries dont last as long as a proprietary would, and they take a dismal 6 hours to charge. But this is another reason that this camera is great bang-for-your-buck.

- Availiable in Black (which I bought), which is cool because it makes the camera look unique among the sea of hundreds of other digital cameras that are only available in brushed metal. This is the reason I liked the Canon S50 also.

Cons:

- No 320x240 movie size. This would help in preserving memory if you want to capture movies that arent VGA. The VGA-fine setting is great looking, but a 256MB Memory Stick Pro can only hold about 2 minutes of it, which in my opinion, kind of defeats the purpose. If you are willing to shell out another $200 for a 1GB Memory Stick the movie mode might be worth it, but you should probably use that money to buy a better camera instead.

- No Aperature or Shutter priority modes. If the W1 had these functions, I probably would have kept it. This would also be good options for the photography novices who may be hesitiant to use the full manual function on this camera.

- High in-camera post-processing. This certainly exaggerates the quality of the images, which is fine if you are using it as a point-and-shoot and printing 4x6 prints. However for more high end photography and digital art uses it basically destroys any fine detail in bright or dark areas of an image.

- Big 2.5-inch screen is virtually exposed and unprotected by any clear plastic as found on most Canon models. This may help with anti-glare. However, I have found that the LCD gets very dirty very quickly because of this. After 1 hour of using the camera, the LCD screen will be covered in fingerprints. LCDs are a bit tough to clean, because you cant use any solvents. I found that using a moist, very soft Kleekex, does the job of cleaning the screen, but it is still an annoyance.

- The included software CD is best used as a coaster.

The reason I gave only 3 stars is because, for ME, this wasnt the right camera. I hope my review will help other customers like me who want a smaller camera with a lot of SLR features. But if you are a digital photo novice who wants good looking pictures in a point-and-shoot 5MP camera on a budget, do yourself a favor, and buy the Sony W1.

After two years of lackluster pictures from a 2MP Canon PowerShot S-100 (constant underexposure, short battery life). I began looking for a digital camera replacement. While I want to take high quality pictures, the bulk of what I take are family and travel snapshots.

After endless procrastination on my part, my wife surprised me with the new Sony DSC-T1 5MP ultracompact camera. It was very cool to play with and takes very good looking pictures with the default settings. The T-1 is a neat camera.

While I liked the DSC-T1 a lot, I had some core concerns with it that are fully addressed by it's sibling camera, the DSC-W1. Not only does the W1 have about a half dozen more features than the T1 - it's also $100 less than the T1!

I want to emphasize that both cameras take very good pictures, especially for a person that wants to take high quality snapshots - that is, pull it out and snap off a few, quickly review the shots and perhaps make some manual adjustments to optimize the pictures.

What's also appealing to me about both cameras is their movie mode support. Both cameras take credible mpeg movies, albeit without zoom support (I'm not aware of any digicam that allows you to adjust the zoom mode once the movie recording has started). In the "best" movie mode (30 frames/sec), you'll consume about 1 Mb per second of recording. However, I find that I only shoot 30 to 60 seconds of "useful and viewable" footage at a family gathering anyway, as well as 20 to 30 photos. In this regard, a 256 Mb Memory Stick Pro card gets me by just fine for a day.

Note that most digicams in this price range shoot 30 fps movies for only a set, limited time of 15 to 30 sec per clip, or they'll shoot longer clips at 15fps, which is pretty poor quality to me. The T1 and W1 allow you to shoot high quality 30 fps video up to the capacity of the Memory Stick Pro card you elect to use. This is very useful to someone like me - who never has viewed the old family videos I recorded on my video camera. Now I load photos and videos on the PC and actually view the video clips!

I am also very impressed with the on-camera editing modes of both cameras. I can shoot images at a 5 Megapixel size and easily downsize them to 3 MP, 1 MP or VGA size, as well as crop them on the camera. With the long battery life of the W1, I do most of my editing on the camera and upload satisfactory images to the PC, lessening the need to open photo editing software. This is really fantastic!

The last general note is that some people criticize the quality of the photo software that comes with the Sonys. I wouldn't know. I never installed it. I learned a long time ago that you are generally better off getting a memory card reader for $20 and uploading the images via a USB connection, then using a third party application to edit the images.

The DSC-W1 has the following features that are important to me that the DSC-T1 lacks.

Cost - $100 less for the W1.

Flash - only a 5 foot distance for the T1, but 12 feet for the W1. Most of my family indoor shots are from 5 to 10 feet away. Isn't that true for most of us?

Tripod mount - I need it a few times a year for family gatherings if I'm going to be in the picture. Also useful for obtaining the best steady shot composition for family portraits. The T1 lacks a tripod mount.

"AA" battery support - I can't overstate how important it is on ANY digicam to utilize common "AA" batteries. No matter how well prepared I try to be, there have been occasions where I forgot to charge the proprietary batteries on my Cannon, much to my condemnation at that family gathering. In a pinch, you can stop at a convenience store and pick up a pack of "AA"s to get you through the day with the W1. Also, "AA" rechargable batteries and rechargers are so inexpensive right now. The propriety battery on the T-1 lists at $60. While the price will come down, I doubt you'll find them readily available at the convenience store.

While the T1's battery life was acceptable, my perception of the W1's battery usage is that it is VERY good. I do a tremendous amount of shooting photos and movies on the W1 in the course of a day, as well as subsequent replay and editing on the camera itself. I still can't believe I have battery life left on the same set I started with after my typical photo and movie session with the W1...

Viewfinder - Both cameras have the excellent 2.5" LCD display. Both cameras are well suited for taking pictures through the LCD viewfinder. However, there are times - in bright light, in crowds, in busy/moving situations - where the optical viewfinder is useful and warranted. The W1 has the optical viewfinder and the T1 does not.

Manual exposure - The T1 and W1 both take very good snapshot pictures in a variety of lighting conditions. However, it's nice to have the flexibility of controlling the manual exposure if you need it.

Other features - While I don't need them, the W1 allows for the addition of wide and telephoto lenses and special filters with an optional lens adapter.

I've just read all these complaints about blurry pictures, and felt compelled to write as it is obvious that some people just don't understand how photography works. The W1 starts by reading the available light, just like any other camera. When it has done that it decides on an appropriate aperture and shutter speed. In actual fact, it tends to choose rather larger apertures and therefore faster shutter speeds than other similar cameras. It can't do anything else - if it set much faster shutter speeds the pictures would only be underexposed. Compare the exposure settings to those on any other camera in the same situation and you will find they are the same. The big difference with the W1 is that, because of the large screen, you tend to hold the camera well away from your face when you shoot, inevitably causing camera shake.

One solution if you want to hand-hold indoors is to increase the ISO setting to 200. Incidentally, you are hard-pressed to take hand-held pictures OUTDOORS on any camera at ISO100 in the UK at any time of the year except in mid-summer. Increasing the ISO to 200 doesn't seem to cause too much noise. You can also try using the viewfinder and propping your elbows on something.

I've only had this camera a few days, but it seems very sharp to me. You just can't expect it to defy the laws of physics.

This our third digital camera. Our other cameras are from Canon and Nikon. I was leaning toward the new Canon S60 because we love our other Canon and they both would take the same CompactFlash memory cards. This camera was going to be mine and I wanted 5MP so I could do some cropping of pictures and still keep up the quality when printing in 8 X 10 format. The Canon S60 kept being delayed, so I started looking at alternatives.

The DSCW1 seems designed to compete with the Canon S60. Both are 5 MP, both are compact, both have manual modes which allow you to be creative with your pictures. The Sony pulled ahead with its larger LCD display and its ability to use standard AA batteries. The Canon relies on a propriatory lithium-ion rechargable battery. The Sony comes with AA rechargables, but should they go dead at an inopportune moment, you can pop in any AA batteries to keep you going.

I bought the Sony and have had it for almost a month. The batteries don't seem to last quite as long as our Canon, but I picked up a couple of spare rechargables for less than $10 and just alternate them in the charger. The DSCW1 downloads using USB2 so even though each picture is larger than 2MB each, they download FAST. The picture quality has been great. Indoor low light shots have a bit more blur than I would like, but they didn't come out at all with either of our other cameras. Colors are crisp and true and prints from the pictures (on a Canon i470 printer) are excellent.

One word about the included software. Yuck. It is useful for downloading and for doing a quick view of what you took, but beyond that it is very limited.

Overall, I am very happy with my Sony DSCW1.

I was considering buying both a digital camera and camcorder since I do a lot of work in both. Howevever, my friend got a Sony DSC T1
and I found out it can take video 640x480 @ 30fps! Although I wasn't too keen on spending over $500 on that, I found out about the DSCW1.

First off, the battery life is fairly decent. I've charged up the included pair and have been using the camera frequently with little problem in battery life, but if you do run dead on the included batteries, you can always stop by a shop and pick up more AAs which is really convenient since you don't have to rely on a proprietary format.

If the 3X optical zoom isn't enough for you, you can always buy a telephoto attachment and screw it onto the lens.

Unlike the DSCT1, the W1 uses the standard memory stick size so you don't have to buy the more expensive Pro Duo sticks. At the same time the camera can use up to 1GB memory sticks.

2.5" LCD is very nice but not a neccesity.

5MP gives great pictures and when scaled down makes an even nicer print.

Don't bother with the included software. If u run windows XP the camera is recognized as a disk drive and you can access pictures immediately after plugging camera into USB.

If you do get this camera, definitely get a Memory Stick Pro 256MB. The 32MB stick lets you take maybe 12 or 13 pictures at max res and 23 pictures @ 3MP. You also can't take advantage of the 640x480 30fps video recording.

I've had this camera for about 4 months, including one big vacation, and lots of picnics, parties, etc. with my 9 month old son. I've taken about 5,000 photos. I'm very happy with the performance of this camera.

I upgraded from my old Olympus C-700-UZ, as a result of my wife's complaints that it didn't fit in the diaper bag. The Sony is definitely a convienient size.

Negatives:
--Memory Stick: not my favorite media, and not found in anything not made by Sony. For about $50 at Costco, I got a 256MB card which holds 100 pictures. A week later I got a second. My HP printer's built-in card reader won't read the Pro version of the memory stick, which means anything bigger than 64MB. I had to buy yet another card reader.
--Poor flash range. The old Olympus did a better job with the flash at about 10', while the Sony generally comes out a bit dark there.
--Bundeled software. It is darn near useless. It is the only place I can view the 16-frame burst mode pictures.

Positives:
--AA batteris. Not rechargable, but when you can easily get 1000 pictures off one pair of Energizer E2 Photo Lithiums ($5), why bother with a rechargable that runs out after a hundred or so? This is with the screen on all the time, and lots of flash photos. The secret to getting longer battery life: use the card reader to erase the pictures, not the camera (erasing flash memory uses lots of juice).
--5MP sharp pictures. Most pictures are of my son and the things he does, so I probably couldn't tell you if there was any subpixel abberations or thermal noise affects, but my son is pretty darn cute in every picture.
--Good Size. Fits comfortably in the hand. Sony's smaller twin to this just felt too thin to be comfortable.
--Durable. I've thwacked it a couple times and it's shown no problems.
--Video. Nice video capabilities. Does a better job than the Olympus. Will not allow changing zoom during a movie, and sometimes it will hunt around looking for focus at odd times during a recording.
--Cool 16-frame burst mode. Takes 16 smaller pictures (640x480?) in under a second, and puts them together in one frame as a 4x4 array. It can play them back as a movie on the camera or with the bundeled software, but other programs just show the tiled picture.

I have had the camera for a few weeks and generally agree with all of the reviews. I would add the following:

(1) Image quality - Best images taken were after changes to the settings: set "contrast" down to "-1" and set "sharpness" up to "+1".

(2) Battery - Very impressed with the 15-min rechargeable Rayovac, excellent product.

(3) Memory stick pro - I have seen some debate whether to buy Sony v. Sandisc, the latter being cheaper than the Sony brand. I bought the Sandisc 256 pro card and am extremely happy with it. Save your money and go for Sandisc.

(4) LCD screen - Big is great but prone to scratches. I bought standard PDA protector and cut down to size.