Sony Party-Shot Personal Photographer for Sony TX1 and WX1 Digital Cameras

by Sony

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.7 x 3.3 inches ; 15.2 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B002KMIZIU
• Item model number: IPT-DS1
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #2 in Camera & Photo > Accessories > Digital Camera Accessories > Docking Stations
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 6, 2009

Product Description

Sony Party-Shot, automatic photographer

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Something completely different!, September 17, 2009

By 

Michael A. Duvernois (Minneapolis, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sony Party-Shot Personal Photographer for Sony TX1 and WX1 Digital Cameras (Electronics)

Cameras are getting smarter with face and smile recognition, and now, with this add on to the Sony WX1 or TX1 (think docking station) it'll take the pictures for you. The idea is that you insert your WX1 or TX1 (this will probably be compatible with future cameras if it catches on) and the unit will pan, zoom, focus, choose a good time with faces and smiles, and shoot the picture. Basically it's a stationary party photographer that lets you do party stuff while it takes pictures. But I got to borrow an early production unit, and I gave it a try. Set it on a small tripod on the table and let it go. The resulting pictures were, well, not half bad. It caught a lot of the people in the room, often with smiles, sometimes with odd expressions, and it certainly was fun to watch as well, panning around for a good shot...

Is it worth the money? Well, it's definitely not a NEED sort of item. It's a moderately expensive toy, but it is a fun one and seems to work reasonably well. Move it from the dining room to the patio to the kitchen during a party and you'll have plenty to post to facebook the next day. (No, it doesn't do that for you.)

I can picture this catching on and becoming pretty big, or disappearing without a trace into the world of ideas whose time did not come. Everyone I showed it to thought it was cool, but not necessarily something they'd be willing to pay good money for.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Its a very VERY good accessory and companion to your camera, October 20, 2009

By 

Jorge Alberto Reza - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sony Party-Shot Personal Photographer for Sony TX1 and WX1 Digital Cameras (Electronics)

I just dont know why people have not posted reviews about this little gadget... it sold out fairly quick (estimated time for delivery on amazon is about 1 to 2 months)
Thats why ill write my review about this little gizmo.

These are probably the things you already know:
Its an automatic photographer
it uses two AA batteries
and no, IT WILL NOT WORK with your older cameras (only the WX1 and the TX1 will work)
it can be mounted on any tripod

The things you might not know:
it really is a novelty item, as a previous poster said: It might catch up (I think it will) or it might just fade away like the sony rolly
This thing is literally a robot. You put your camera on the base and thats it... the base will start looking for faces and snap some pictures.
It has a mind of its own... you let the base take the pics and thats about it.

I've used it on a family dinner (about two hours) and it took around 237 pics. about 160 pics were awesome... the other were not that great (blurry, low light etc)
I got positive comments about it, but some family members felt uncomfortable by it... why?

As I said before it has a mind of its own, and if it really likes you (and believe it or not, it choses its favorite subjects) it will stare at you for a long time until it gets a good picture (it took about 10 pictures of my brother before changing subjects)

A nice little feature it has is that it detects when a person blinks. In the weird event that it snaps a picture at the same time the subject closes his or her eyes then it will mark it as "blink eye detected" and immediately snap another one.

Dont expect to put this thing on a tripod and take pictures all around your dinning room. Remember that it is limited by the camera's lens. In other words, it works best with the WX1 (yes, I have both, the WX1 and the TX1)
This thing works best at a table, or with a closed group of people, not in a huge party.

aside from being a new gadget I think its very useful and practical because you forget about taking pics

On a side note:
It works best when you ignore it. Disable your cameras flash and let it go... Try it, you wont be dissapointed

I hope you find this a helpful review and yes.. I would buy this thing again!

(if you are also looking for the camera, go for the WX1... its not as feature packed as the TX1 but it has a better lens =) )

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I sent it back., December 11, 2009

By 

CameraFan (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sony Party-Shot Personal Photographer for Sony TX1 and WX1 Digital Cameras (Electronics)

While I was very excited to get the PartyShot, it just didn't live up to expectations. The problem is that it's only designed to rotate around randomly and use the camera's built in smile detection function. What this means is that:
1. During its random, round and round, up and down, zooming in and out hunting, it has to find a face, that remains in postion for the face detection
AND
2. While holding the position on that face, the person has to smile, and hold the position long enough for it to lock in and take the photo
So yes, the first day we had this, while everybody was interested in it long enough to stand there, wait for it, hold the smile, it would SOMETIMES take a photo, and then only about 30% of the time. The other 70% of the time it didn't seem to find the smile or be able to focus even though the person was standing there still holding a smile!
Even worse, once the novelty wore off, and people didn't feel like standing there, still, smiling, or if the camera wasn't used in a well lit area, it wouldn't take any photos at all. Plus, even though it uses the flash, if it doesn't have enough light initially to find the face and the smile, it's not going to work. So in the end, you'll get more photos AND better photos by just holding the camera yourself and taking the picture. Believe it or not, this accessory would probably be better if it just took photos when it finds a face without trying to find a face and a smile, which never happens when there is no photographer holding the camera. So as much as I wanted to keep it, it was too expensive given it was a relatively useless lazy susan. It's really too bad, because it seems if the engineers would have just thought about this for a few minutes, they could have made the product much more realistic and useful.