Customer Reviews

Sony DSCS85 CyberShot 4.1MP Digital Still Camera w/ 3x Optical Zoom

5 star:		(63)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I looked around to pick a good digital camera. I had a few things in mind that I wanted but I could never find a right all together piece. I think that Sony was the best compromise in terms of features, size and durability. I shoot a lot of film and a lot of times I really don't have to, since the pictures don't go further than web. Using S85 saved me on processing cost, time and gave me more options as far as manipulation of the images go. Since my original purchase was to ease the load and free me up in my "professional" life I find that more often I happen to pack the digital on my hiking or camping trips. I still carry my film camera but I supplement my film shots with a lot of digital snaps. Using Sony manual modes also allows me to become better photographer and it's really fool proof. I see the results immediately and if something is wrong I can re-shoot it again which was impossible with film. I mean yes I can always shoot two or three frames but you surly never know until you get the film from the lab what came out. When I shoot concerts or band shots this is a one time deal. They can't go back and replay the gig. So to be perfect and on the dime is very important for me. I choose S85 for couple of reasons:

1) Optics. Can't go wrong with Carl Zeiss glass. It's a really sharp and warm saturated tone that keeps me buying into Zeiss family.
2) Lens brightness (f/stops). Maybe there are better cameras out there with higher zoom range but f/stops on this camera (S85) rock. It's bright and fast enough which means that in combination with faster film setting it will get the job done.
3) Battery life. I originally was very skeptic of using rechargeable battery because of the possible what if I run out of juice scenario. I assumed that I will feel more secure with AAs that rechargeable proprietary battery. I was wrong. Sony battery lasts forever and with one spare everything is pretty much covered.
4) Quality. Good enough for nice and crisp 8 by 10 shots. If I really push it I can get 11 by 14. But for my application it gets the job done.
5) Controls. Easily accessible, options are always at the finger tips.
6) Construction. It's a one big solid unit. No swivel lens, sliding doors, build in lens covers or pop up flashes. There is very few moving parts which makes it a durable piece. Plus build in charger keeps all your things organized.
7) Flash and Sharpness control. At the finger tips I have full override on functions that were always problematic with digital cameras. This saves post production time required for touch ups.

What could have Sony done to make it better?

1) ISO. Highest ISO setting is 400 I wish they went for 800.
2) Accessories. There is a load of after market accessories for this camera by other manufactures than Sony. I would like to see some more lenses or maybe even external battery packs made by Sony itself. Underwater housing would be great.
3) Little bit slow start up time. That needs some works.
4) Memory stick. Great concept and I couldn't care less if I'm using memory sticks, flash cards or smart media cards but with 128 MB max Sony media is not the hottest choice out there.

Sony S85 is a good camera, probably the best out of the bunch out there. I would highly recommend it to amateurs and semi pros alike. It's a good value for the money.

I have been a 35mm film amateur photographer for many years. I have always used Nikon equipment and I value to control the camera myself for maximal creativity. I waited till now to try a digital camera, what I did two weeks ago buying the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S85 camera. These are my impressions when I compare it with classical 35 mm film and my reflex Nikon camera:
1.- The DSC-S85 is small, but not small enough to fit easily in a pocket. Nevertheless is easy to carry and the retractable lenses make it quite compact when the power is off. The camera comes with a lens cover for protection. It is a high quiality point a shot with manual settings capabilities.
2.- One of my concerns about digital photography is battery life. With the DSC-S85 this is not a problem at all. The battery will last a long time and unless you don’t have the chance to recharge the battery during several days, it will not run out of power. The battery recharges quite fast when connected to electrical power.
3.- The lenses and Carls Zeiss, and the quality shows. Impressive resolution across the whole picture, not only when you view the pictures in the computer screen but also in print. I have done up to 5x7 inches prints and the quality is as good as film. Resolution is as good as the one obtained with my Nikon lenses.
4.- It very easy to learn how to use the camera and very easy to control manually the shutter and aperture. In addition you have also aperture and shutter priority settings and full automatic setting. The easiest camera I have ever had.
5.- The light meter is very good, and most of the exposures will come perfect unless you try to fool the camera with difficult light situations. The exposures are better than when I use my Nikon SLR.
6.-Color balance is very good, saturated images but with real colors. Only very strong reds (i.e. a red rose) might fool a bit the camera and you might need to correct the image with software. Film here might be better and you can uses several film typoes, but one advantage of digital is that you have ISO 100-400 with no need to change the film.
7.-The LCD screen is very good, bright (you can regulate the brightness, and provides a quite realistic view of the actual image. I use the LCD a lot, and really is a great way to compose pictures, better than using the view finder.
8.-You can do MPG movies that are fine if all you want is to have a memory of a short moment (don’t expect top quality here, after all this is an still camera). You can not do this with a film camera.
9.- Although the Memory Sticks are not the cheapest memory in town they are reasonable after the recent price drop. With 128 MB you will be able to take >60 pictures at the top resolution. Film is not cheaper because you can reuse the Memory Stick for ever.
10.- Very good macro. Nice pictures taken at short distances (<4 inches). My macro fotos with the SLR Nikon are better though.

If you are a film photographer that wish to get very good quality in digital to have the opportunity of doing creative photos without caring about the price of film, I highly recommend this camera. You will enjoy it very much you will make more photos that before (without paying always for the film) and when the digital SLR cameras drop in price (2-3 years from now) you will be ready to move to a classical camera with digital power.

I have been shopping for a digital camera for about six months now, and I have been unable to make up my mind. I didn't want to spend a ton of money, so I was looking at several lower end 2.1 megapixel cameras. Well, I suppose my wife grew weary of my indecision, so she purchased the Sony DSC-S85 for me for Christmas. I was pleasantly surprised by the gift, and even more surprised by the quality of the camera. I have been a camera buff for several years, and have been wanting to dabble in digital photography. I can't imagine a better camera for under $1,000.00. Granted I have only had it for a week, and I am just beginning to discover the incredible potential of this camera, but the options seem almost limitless. It is amazingly easy to use, and offers a host of choices to make your experience as challenging as you would like. The 3x optical zoom is quite adequate, but it is enhanced by the digital zoom which still provides a high quality image.

Here are the pros and cons as I have seen them:

Pros:
Easy to use
Packed with features & all functions are easily accessed
4.1 megapixels provide incredibly sharp images at highest resolution
Small & sturdy construction
Long Battery life w/ fairly quick recharge (battery meter is very accurate)
Bright LCD screen
MPEG movie option (memory hog)
Great value at just $800.00

Cons:
16mb Memory Stick is not enough to hold many high res images & additional Memory Sticks are expensive.
Images in LCD screen often appear in focus, but really aren't
Bright reds tend to cause a pink hue throughout image (but that could happen to a 35mm SLR)
Slight delay when taking pictures, but canbe overcome with some practice.

All things considered, I am very, very happy with this camera. As with any product it has it's negatives, but they are far outweighed by the positives. In addition to the camera, my wife also purchased the Memory Stick reader, that can remain attached to the PC via a USB port and functions like a zip drive. This is very helpful when it comes to downloading images, because you don't waste the camera battery life. She also purchased a 128mb Memory Stick. Yes, this is a very expensive accessory ($100 +), but it has been worth it. At it's highest resolution image it will hold 60 images, but if you are taking pictures to e-mail at 640 x 480 it will hold nearly 10 times as many. I also like the fact the Memory Stick can be used over and over again. If you are looking to take pictures and turn them into prints, then this a great camera. The color saturation is tremendous, and the image quality is outstanding. If all you wish to do is e-mail photos and post them to the web then you could get by with a much cheaper model. Even after only a week, I have no problem giving this camera my highest recommendation.

I've never owned a digital camera, nor am I anything but an extremely amateur photographer, but our first grandchild was coming, so I began doing a lot of research in consumer's magazines and at technical review websites. I narrowed the choice down to three cameras: The Sony S85, the Olympus C4000, and the Nikon CoolPix 4300, all of them 4 megapixels. After playing around with all three models, I finally went with the Sony S85 -- and I have not been disappointed. It's both simple enough for a camera novice like me to be able to take good pictures almost right out of the box, yet flexible enough (with the full manual control option, etc) to allow me to learn and to work up to a more advanced level. The controls are pretty intuitive -- for anyone with computer experience, anyway -- and the viewscreen is large and bright. It's also "camera-shaped," not a radical new design, which feels more at home when I hold it, and it's large enough to allow my rather large hands to wrap around it. (The Canon Elph is a nice little camera, but for me it's like trying to type on a cell phone keypad.) After six months and some hundred of images, I can recommend this camera unreservedly.

Amateur digital cameras make me long for the speed and accuracy of my Nikon N-90S professional SLR. But an equivalent digital will set you back $5000 plus lenses, and increases the focal length of your lenses by 50% (and I love wide angle).

The DSC-S85, which a friend of mine owns, retains the lens of DSC-70, which I own, increases the pixel resolution, and lays out the controls a bit more naturally. Still, don't expect to hand this to your non-photographically-oriented friend and expect them to be able to control it -- the menus, etc. are just awful and very slow to navigate.

The real win for me for this camera is the Zeiss lens, which while not up to their professional lenses, is far better than what you get on other digitals. This lens goes fairly wide (34mm equivalent for 35mm film), and has an excellent macro resolution. It's also super fast at f2.0 at the widest to f2.8 at the longest; phenomenal specs for a lens that costs $800, much less a whole camera. A serious problem is that there's no way to get accurate focus -- the LCD just isn't sharp enough to selectively focus on just the foreground of food photos, for instance, even though at full telephoto on f2.8, you get a nice shallow depth of field.

At higher resolutions, the camera can only be described as slow both in time between the shutter press and the snap (it locks focus, so pre-locking by pushing shutter halfway will help), and between photos (especially at high res, it can take seconds to write the image from the camera's buffer to the memory stick). It's also relatively slow to auto-focus.

The flash is weak, and so close to the lens that if anyone's looking at the camera, it's instant redeye. On the other hand, the lens and CCD are so sensitive, you can nearly take photos in the dark anyway. I do like the fact that you can fill flash, but wish you could turn down the fill level. For anything but the most casual flash photography, you can hook up an external flash.

MPEG films are cute, but short and poor quality (or longer, and even poorer quality). If you want to shoot longer mpegs, you'll have to hook up the video out to a notebook and get the relevant software. I wish they'd just get rid of this feature along with the sound and sound memo recording, and give me a slightly wider lens and more control over focusing (say zooming the display during viewing).

And you'll need a new memory stick or two (get the 128Mb ones, you won't regret it if you like to take photos).

I shopped around and looked at a lot of cameras before I decided on this one. I wanted a camera that could take pictures like a 35mm, yet have ease and use of a digital. This one fits the bill. On highest setting it records pictures at about 2mb. That means that if you buy a 64mb memory stick you get 32 pictures.(You can get lots more if you go to a lower megapixal setting, but why buy a high megapixal camera if you aren't going to use it to the max?) I have yet to go that far (I have transfered them to the computer and then started over). The battery last about 180 minutes using it with the LCD (which I recommend shutting off if you don't need it-especially outside). The only drawback at the present is that most photo printers cannot print at the capacity that my camera can take. I did have my pictures developed professionally online and was very pleased. The other drawback-and this is true for almost all digital cameras at this time, is that action photos are very difficult to capture due to low shutter speed. (not impossible, just very hard). This camera allows for adjustments of the aperature so you can take lower light pictures. I am very happy with the camera,and I recommend it for anyone who really wants to use this for taking vacation photos and such. Deleting and in camera cropping is easy and comes out great. You'll find yourself taking over a hundred pictures in just the first week!

I must say that I was quite skeptical about digital photography when I received this camera as a wedding gift; I had read all the articles pointing out that film cameras produce higher quality photos, etc. I was also quite certain that Sony could not possibly produce top quality lenses.

I was wrong on both counts. This is an excellent value for an entry level digital camera. It takes excellent pictures in ideal lighting, and the convenience of digital imaging is such that you will never go back to standard film. While the 16MB memory stick that comes with the camera is a joke, and you'll have to shell out for a 128MB or 64MB almost immediately if you want to enjoy the camera, all of the other accessories turned out better than I expected. The battery life, for example, is excellent (and this is VERY important for digital cameras); I rarely have to even think about turning off my LCD since I can get about 2 hours life out of it.

A few gripes: The camera has a very hard time dealing with bad lighting - it generally darkens everything, often to the point that everything is unviewable. As a result of this, the camera generally does not show its strengths indoors - it takes outstanding outdoor, daylight pictures, but struggles mightily whenever the lighting is a bit challenging. Also, the camera's auto-focus can leave something to be desired; it often takes poorly focussed shots if there are both foreground and background items on which to focus.

That said, this is one of the best gifts I've ever received. I use the camera constantly (much more than I used my old film camera), and I'm generally very happy with the quality of my pictures. You can't go wrong with this camera.

As a fine art photographer form almost 20 years, I was somewhat skeptical about digital cameras as being much more than tech toys. When I finally decided to get a digital camera, I poured over the detailed, technical reviews to gather as much info as I could on competing models. In comparison with other cameras, what sold me on the S85 was the image quality, color fidelity, and ease of use. Now that I've used the camera a lot, I could not be more pleased. For occasional 35mm work, I [previously] used a top "Pro" class camera and lenses, which will probably now be relegated to the closet for the most part. And believe me, I understand metering and focus, but I could not hit exposures and focus dead-on nearly as quickly or often as the S85.

Pros: Nice, well balanced feel, unbelievably sharp lens, rich, accurate color without being "clipped" at the top end, excellent metering under diverse lighting conditions, snappy, accurate autofocus, and user friendly menus.

Cons: None so far. Suggestion: Buy more memory (64MB has worked for me).

Sony gets 6 stars but Amazon allows me to give only 5. Simply an awesome little camera.

I just bought one. Considered the G1 canon, and the 995, both similar in price. BUT THE SONY has 4 megapixels! What more to say? Image quality is excellent. Ease of use - any dummy can use it. And it seems durable. It is comfortable in the hand. TONS of modes - shutter, aperture, program, b/w, sepia, different resolutions, etc.

The onscreen help is great. Tells you minutes of batt time, pictures, all camera settings, and even when the zoom is optical vs digital.

THE ONLY DOWNSIDE: uses Memory stick instead of CF. MS is much more expensive. Oh well... I wish you could use a microdrive!

This camera is so superior to the G1 and nikon. Sony's price is incredible.

I come from a family of photographers and have been a serious photographer for 40 years. Over that time, I have owned just about every camera type and brand there is (Leica, Nikon, Rollei, Contax, etc...) and I have honestly not used a camera that is as sweet and accurate as this (only possible exception the Contax G2-a beautifully designed camera). I have used the meter almost dead into the sun and gotten shadow detail in center average mode. The lens is phenomenal and the controls are not only exactly what you would want (as a photographer) but are where you want them. Thank you Sony for making my transition into digital so exciting!!