Customer Reviews

Sony DSC-D770 Cyber-shot 1.5MP Digital Camera with 5x Optical Zoom

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I use this camera to illustrate the many magazine articles I write, and editors and readers like the results. It is not widely realized that to get double the resolution you need four times the number of pixels. So to go to 3 megapixels won't even double the dots per inch as published. I'll move up when I can get 5 megapixels for under $1000.

Another factor often missed is that unless you can fill the frame, you are wasting a lot of pixels. So the zoom range is often more important than pixel count.

Some of the other comments on this camera seem uninformed: I plug the PCMIA card that the camera uses to store images into my Mac PowerBook, no software, no drivers are needed. I then drag them right into Photoshop or into a folder. It's fast and easy. The same holds for PCs that can read these cards.

I like this camera's good handling, true SLR nature (I wish it had depth-of-field preview, though), ability to take closeup and other lenses, and good control of exposure. My photos are seen by tens or hundreds of thousands of people, and nobody can tell that I've taken them with an under-$1000 digital camera, even when published in a glossy magazine. At its price, it gets five stars.

After purchasing this camera a year ago I donated my SLR camera to my high school alma matter. The Sony Cybershot is a easy to use camera that allows you to take any kind of picture you want. Even though I rate the camera itself 5 stars, I wish Sony would create lens and other camera accessories for this professional style camera.

I just received this camera today, and already I'm finding too many faults, the worst of which is that this is not a 3-mega-pixel camera - it's a 1.5.

That having been said, what attracted me to this model was it's manual control - very important for advanced users. My biggest complaint here is that the focus ring is hardly available. You can see in the photograph that the camera body actually cowls the body of the lens. What I didn't realize until I got my hands on it was that the cowl really gets in the way. You can't wrap your hand around it.

The optical viewfinder is small and dark, the flash tends to wash out the subject when set at the higher ISO, and the drivers for the flash card needed extraordinary user intervention to work (luckily, I'm an IT person).

Sounds like I hate it, right.

I guess if I were less interested in resolution and ease of manual control, I'd keep this camera. I have to say that the photographs I did take were of very high quality for a camera in this price range. It takes very sharp images, with great color. It's also really easy to use, and the automatic features were fairly flawless in their operation.

Now, I have to spend 2 1/2 times as much to get what I really wanted. Alas.

Sony may have nailed down the digital Cam Corders, but their digital still cameras...need some serious work done with them. We produce contenct completly for the web and deal with several camera makes. Our advice buy anything other than a sony if you want to take pictures without a profesional light set. The quality is on the grainy side, and for the money you will be a lot better off with something in the Olympus or Kodak line ups.

People have the wrong idea that just because a camera doesn't have 3+ megapixels, it means that it is no good. Unless you are a professional photographer, 1-2 megapixels is just fine. This camera is a great camera with great features that allow you to really fine-tune your pictures. The quality of a picture is not determined by the number of megapixels, but by the attention to details such as focus, lighting, sharpness, etc.

This camera is a great camera for people who are not professionals, but want to learn the art of photography. With so many options and manual functions, one can really learn how a camera works and what works best in different situations.

For a great digital SLR at such a great price, people should not be fretting over megapixels. This is a wonderful camera and a wonderful learning tool.

This is a great camera but Sony does not offer any way to install the drivers software for this camera. The software that comes with the camera is only good for windows 95 98 and mybe 2000 systems

Since when does 1344 x 1024 translate to 3 megapixels? I don't own it, but I would have purchased it if it would have been a 3 megapixel camera. Since it isn't, I'm sure it's a good 1.3+ megapixel camera.

My wife purchased the Sony S50 model for my birthday. I took several pictures with it and saved them to my PC. I returned the S50 for a couple of reasons: - I had a lot of dificulty gettingt the USB software to work - I really wanted one of the SLR type digital cameras

I narrowed my selection to the Sony 770 and the Olympus E-10, and based on price I took a chance on the Sony model.

After working with it for a couple of weeks, I am very dissapointed and am sending it back.

On the positive side, and contrary to some of the other reviews, It was extremely easy to pop the PCMCIA card in and out of the camera and into my laptop. No drivers or software were needed. Getting pictures into and out of photoshop was drag and drop simple.

I found the camera very easy to use. The remote control was a great feature when working off a tripod. The feature set was good, and the flexibility was great.

Now the negative news and the reason why I am returning it.

The resolution of the pictures was not up to snuff with other cameras available. I took several shots in exact same lighting and subjects as the S50, and the S50 produced superior results in terms of sharpness of image and color rendition. The 770 produces muted, washed out colors, especially in low light. Trying to take pictures at night (capturing the neighborhood christmas displays)was a waste of time.

The Flash unit is sub par and not able to provide adequate light. In fact the camera took better pictures in natural light than when using the flash. Much better results were obtained using an external flash borrowed from my 35mm camera.

The resolution I guess is what you would expect from only 1.5Mpx, but there is no reason to settle for this unless you are stymied by price.

Finally, I found the battery life to be totally unacceptable when using the internal flash, and the LCD. Many of the advanced features are only available when using the LCD. The batery lasted only for 30 minutes and maybe 20 shots when using the flash and the LCD to preview results.

The concept of the camera was a nice try by Sony, perhaps they will up the ante by putting one of their more advanced CCDs into the next iteration.

In the meantime, I am going to have to splurge and try the Olympus E-10

The camera is great. However, there is no way to download the pictures if your PC is not Sony Compatible. I spent 2 days with Sony and a couple calls to Gateway, but nothing got resolved. The MSAC-PR1 that came with the camera did not work with my computer. I have NT on it, and Sony said I had to update the bios, and gateway said I couldn't. Very Frustrating.

I have read several write ups on this camera and I am a DSC-D770 owner. This is one of the best SLR style digital cameras you will get for under 800.00. If I had my choice I certainly would have moved to the Olympus E-10 Digital SLR Camera but at a proce tag of 2000.00 I thought that a bit out of my range so I settled for the Sony DSC-D770 for it's features and the fact I did not need a card reader in order to download my pics. If I was a real diehard user of digital cameras, certainly cameras above 2000.00 is where I would obviously be looking. But my DSC-D770 is great!