Sony Cybershot DSCW300 13.6MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom with Super Steady Shot

by Sony

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 3.7 x 0.7 x 2.3 inches ; 8.8 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00153WWRK
• Item model number: DSC-W300
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (86 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,396 in Camera & Photo (See Top 100 in Camera & Photo)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: February 29, 2008

Product Description

DSC-W300 features 13.6MP, 3x zoom lens and 2.7” Clear Photo LCD. Along with scratch resistant titanium body, W300 is powered with Smile Shutter technology to capture smile the moment they happen, Face Detection to capture faces clearly, Optical Image Stabilization to avoid blur, Intelligent Scene Recognition to avoid failure picture, and other great features like DRO Plus, EXTRA High ISO and EXTRA High Burst to take great shots. Also includes easy image management that includes calendar view and favorites and HD output to easy share and view images in amazing High Definition detail on your HDTV.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

118 of 123 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Techno Geeks Review., July 13, 2008

By 

Chris (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sony Cybershot DSCW300 13.6MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom with Super Steady Shot (Electronics)

To start things off, please. Do not listen to the reviewers who said that the lens is poor. The lens on this camera, when compared to the lens on the Canon Sd790IS, Sd1100IS, and SD770IS, simply trumps them in every way - from middle to the extreme corners of the image. The canon, however, becomes very blury toward the edges giving a kind of "motion" feeling - not the sony.

Some say the canon shots look for colorful and eye-popping. To achieve shots like this, simply go into program mode, adjust the image sharpness to "+" and the color mode to "vivid" and the pictures are the same, if not better. The sony outdoes canon here by adding in a Dynamic range optimization in three steps: off, normal, or extra. With this, the camera can achieve a great range of colors in both the highlights and shadows of a shot.

Where as the sony doesn't have the "color-swap" wiz-bang functions, it does have more usefull settings like the Extra High Speed Burst setting, which can take 5 Frames per second! I tested this with my dog rolling around in the yard, and at each frame the camera had shot at such a high shutter speed my dog was stopped in time with out any blur. These pictures are only at 3MP, but are still very respectable for a camera that can fit in your shirt pocket. Also, the camera has program settings to bring out different colors in an image to achieve a certain look. Either Blue, Red, Green, or your can change the image to warmer or color depending on the shot you want to take. The green mode is very usefull for macro nature shots.

Also - 13.6 megapixels may be to big for some people (roughly 5-5.5 MB's per image), however when you turn the notch down to 8M, Bayer Interpolation goes away on the sensor, and the picture quality, in good light, starts to approach starter level SLR's, when the noise reduction is set right. Simple do a search on Flickr for "W300" to see what i mean.

One small gripe though - you cannot zoom while recording video. You CAN zoom before starting the video, but once the camera starts recording you cannot zoom in or out any further.

I also purchased Soft Carrying Case (Genuine Leather) LCS-TWB for DSC-T100,T75 T70,T25,T20, W90,W85,W80,W55,W35 black with this camera, and although the case doesn't even mention this camera in the compatibility list (I believe this camera came out AFTER this case) the case works wonderfully with the camera, and makes the already exuding quality of this product feel even more classy.

P.S. -> Nikon Is going to use the Sony developed sensor in this camera on their upcoming "P6000" flagship advanced P&S, adding to the credibility of this camera.

50 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spend more time learning about your cameras..., July 5, 2008

By 

T. Duong "T.D." (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sony Cybershot DSCW300 13.6MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom with Super Steady Shot (Electronics)

To those that are blaming the lack of sharpness on lens quality... I think the lens is phenomenal considering the size of the sensor.

I myself personally own a canon 700 IS, and this camera as well. I have spent ample time framing the same shot with both cameras and changing settings on both cameras.

In my opinion the sony IS capable of creating very sharp pictures superior in both color saturation and exposure then the canon series. It just isn't as obvious to do it as the canon as the canons don't offer near the amount of manual options that the sony offers. They pretty much lock the consumer into making good pictures and the consumers think they're the greatest.

That said, even a digital SLR can take very poor/soft pictures if you don't focus correctly. Spot, scene, average focusing can cause lots of problems with sharpness.

To make the sony perform as a Canon series camera would, place the camera into the auto mode, enable the iSCN option (not iSCN+). No muss no fuss sharp pictures just like Canons with in my opinion more vivid pictures and realistic colors. At least compared to my canon 700IS.

Either way, both cameras are great, both cameras have their shortcomings as they are compact cameras, but every digital camera is capable of taking great pictures. Just have to spend more time learning about it and trying to get the best performance out of them.

37 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fit For The Job., September 15, 2008

By 

Mr. H. C. Orr (England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sony Cybershot DSCW300 13.6MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom with Super Steady Shot (Electronics)

I must start by saying that this camera (DSC-W300) is the first digital camera I have purchased. I have some experience with 35mm SLRs, but I wanted a versatile piece of kit that would enable me to upload pictures to the internet, print directly from the camera, and add images to my PlayStation 3 console.

The first thing I should note, and as indicated by the above comments, is that I think compact cameras are fundamentally utility devices. There are many people on the internet who criticise this model's unsuitability for longer-distance and wide-angle photography, and the lack of many video modes. On the first point, I would say this: compact cameras are designed for high quality close-up images (family and friends groups, primarily) and are not designed for vary-focal images (e.g., someone standing 300 yards in front of Mount Fuji and expecting both to be in focus perfectly). On the second point: movie modes on a still camera are a lovely bonus for a camera but are an add-on that should not be counted towards any final evaluation of the product. Sorry to sound snotty, but those are the basics.

So, does the W300 add up for the basics? Clearly, the Carl Zeiss lens is going to deliver on the bread and butter family snaps that is always going to be the brief for compacts. The 13.9 megapixel rating is useful, although the 8MP setting offers fantastic quality images that can be converted to 16:9 1080p for viewing on televisions. It is true that the .9 of a MP seems to have been lost in the implementation of actually taking photos, as the highest setting is the flat 13MP!

There are the usual ISO presets, automatic and night settings, as well as smile detection technology. Again, the brief of a compact camera has been observed well by Sony, weighing easy-of-use against range of use. This is again apparent in the neat Movie Mode: the 640 "fine" and "standard" image settings are perfectly acceptable for on-the-fly movies showing the drunken antics and practical jokes that are the stock-in-trade of the light-hearted situations that the W300 predominantly deals with. The MPEG-1 video format is also compatible with Windows Media Player and the PS3, among others.
The software that comes with the W300 enables the user to add their photos to a calendar on their PC, and even add location details for each picture via internet maps. The standard easy-to-use image manipulation features are there, again underlining the pick-up-and-play nature of compacts. Videos can be converted to WMV, too.

On the downside, the zoom is only x3, meaning for the occasions when it is needed it is not as versatile as, say, some of the Panasonic models. Secondly, the battery life is not quite what I expected (quoted in the manual at 150 minutes -with LCD panel switched on- for taking pictures alone), and the charge time for a full battery is a whopping 330 minutes. These are the only significant drawbacks to the camera that I have found thus far.

Build quality is excellent, as expected from a Japanese-made product. The LCD screen is more durable than I had expected, and its 2.7" size is more than large enough for viewing back and editing any images.

My first impressions of this product are very positive. As a compact camera the DSC-W300 is a very capable camera, with many of the intelligent design features expected from Sony. However, for those wanting a decent amount of zoom or other quasi-SLR features, it may be best to go for another model, or just take the plunge and go for an SLR instead.