Sony Cybershot DSCW120/B 7.2MP Digital Camera with 4x Optical Zoom with Super Steady Shot (Black)

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Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 3.5 x 2.2 x 0.9 inches ; 5.4 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0011E67BA
• Item model number: DSCW120/B
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (212 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,696 in Camera & Photo (See Bestsellers in Camera & Photo)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: January 23, 2008

Product Description

Manufacturer Description

Capture smiles as they happen. The 7.2-megapixel Cyber-shot W120 features innovative Smile Shutter technology which photographs smiles as they happen. Built to impress, this model boasts a Carl Zeiss 4x optical zoom lens for high quality close-ups and Sony's Double Anti-Blur solution for crisp, clear images. For speedy recovery, the BIONZ image processor gets you ready for the next shot. In addition, it has Face Detection technology that detects up to eight faces and optimizes focus, exposure, and color for accurate, natural photos of family and friends.

Cyber-shot W120 Highlights

7.2-megapixel Super HAD CCD
More megapixels give you more detail and definition when you make big prints or crop in tight on your subject. The advanced Sony Super HAD (Hole Accumulated Diode) CCD design allows more light to pass to each pixel, increasing sensitivity and reducing noise.

Carl Zeiss 4x Optical Zoom Lens
4x optical zoom brings distant subjects closer to help you capture sharp, detailed long shots and quickly frame images for better composition -- great for family sports, outdoor fun, and travel photos.

2.5-inch TFT LCD Display
The large, bright 2.5-inch TFT LCD (115K) display makes it easy to compose shots, check results, and read menus in sharp natural color, even in bright sunlight.

Face Detection
Face Detection technology automatically controls flash, focus, exposure, and white balance to help reveal faces in shadows, make skin tones look more natural, reduce red-eye, and eliminate harsh facial glare. Now with adult or child priority so you can determine who the focal point should be.

Smile Shutter Mode
Smile Shutter technology captures smiles the moment they happen - without the need to press the shutter. The mode can be set to capture when your subject laughs, smiles or even grins, and like Face Detection is able to differentiate children and adults to set priority.

Sony Double Anti-Blur Solution
The combination of Super SteadyShot optical image stabilization and high ISO sensitivity helps compensate for shaky hands, minimizes blur, and allow flash-free shooting to preserve the mood.

Super SteadyShot Optical Image Stabilization
Compensates for shaky hands and minimizes blur with a built-in gyro sensor that detects camera movement and sends correcting signals to a stabilization lens -- so there’s no need to crop in on your shot to reduce blur.

High Sensitivity (ISO 3200) Mode
With high sensitivity of ISO 3200, you can shoot effectively in low light without flash to preserve the mood, while the Sony Clear RAW Noise Reduction system helps suppress the color noise that can degrade low-light shots.

Dynamic Range Optimization Standard
Powered by the exclusive Sony Bionz high-speed processing engine, Dynamic Range Optimization preserves image data in bright highlights and reveals more detail in shadows or backlit areas -- for great results even in difficult lighting conditions.

Convenient Photo Modes
To adjust quickly for specific shooting situations, you can choose from several convenient photo modes, including Auto, Program Auto, and Scene Selections such as Twilight, Twilight Portrait, Fireworks, Smile Shutter, Landscape, Soft Snap, Snow, High Sensitivity, and Beach environments.

MPEG Movie VX Fine Mode
Capture VGA (640 x 480) audio/video clips at a high frame rate (up to 30 frames per second). The maximum length of time you can shoot continuously is about 10 minutes.

Automatic Macro Shooting
Standard Auto Focus now covers the macro focus range, eliminating the need to manually change focus modes for close-up photography. The Macro mode has not been eliminated, and enabling it accelerates Auto Focus when shooting at point-blank range.

9-Point Auto Focus
Because an off-center subject can make your shot more interesting, a 9-point auto focus measures auto-focus at 9 precision points instead of 5 -- giving you greater creative freedom to compose your image.

Smart Zoom Feature
The Sony Smart Zoom feature intelligently "crops into" the central portion of interest in your photo, helping avoid the image degradation of other digital zooms.

Burst Mode
You can fire off up to one hundred shots at approx. 0.66 second intervals (at any resolution: VGA to full resolution mode) -- a great way to capture a child’s first steps or a pet’s best tricks.(Approx. 1.5fps (100 shots)).

Simple Setup Controls
A quick press of the Home button opens your user-friendly graphical interface -- and you can select functions by simply moving a cursor vertically or horizontally to the appropriate icon. Function names and the on-screen Function Guide display make it easier to learn camera setup operations.

Easy Shooting Mode
A simplified camera environment especially attractive to beginners or digital camera users who want to keep things simple, Easy Shooting provides easy-to-read, on-screen instructions and limits the number of camera settings to help prevent misuse of the camera while still providing excellent results.

Function Guide
This beginner-friendly function helps manage various functions and settings by displaying the description of chosen functions or settings on the LCD screen. The Function Guide can also be switched off.

Optical Viewfinder
In addition to the LCD display, a built-in optical viewfinder lets you compose your photos in traditional rangefinder camera style, and also helps save battery power by turning off your LCD display.

15MB Internal Memory
Even if you forget your flash memory card, you can get the shot because 15MB internal memory lets you capture a limited number of shots with in-camera convenience, then easily transfer your shots to a PC or optional Memory Stick Duo media.

Memory Stick Duo Media Convenience
A built-in slot accepts optional Memory Stick Duo Media or Memory Stick PRO Duo Media -- the compact, high-capacity storage media that make it easily to upload photos to your PC and are compatible with millions of devices worldwide.

Stamina Battery Power
Provides extended battery life and shooting capacity when using a fully-charged Lithium Ion battery -- enough to cover a long weekend or a whole vacation.

HDTV Compatibility
High-resolution images can be enjoyed in all their beauty simply by connecting the camera directly to a Sony BRAVIA HDTV or other compatible HDTV . This provides an excellent alternative to viewing photos as prints or on a computer monitor, and is ideal for users who want to share photos in the comfort of their living room. Optional HD solutions include a Cyber-shot cradle/charger with component cable output, or component cable directly to your HDTV.

"PhotoTV HD"
PhotoTV HD compatibility allows the camera to be connected to a PhotoTV HD-capable Sony BRAVIA HDTV via the optional HD output adaptor, for highly detailed, high-definition color images displayed in unprecedented realism and full HD quality.

16:9 High-Resolution Mode
In addition to the standard 2-megapixel size, the convenient 16:9 aspect ratio shooting mode for HDTV display can now be shot in 5 megapixels, making it possible to obtain beautiful, high-definition prints with the same aspect ratio as HDTV.

Wide Zoom Display
To use the entire image area of the compatible HDTV screens, Wide Zoom automatically expands standard 4:3 and 3:2 images to 16:9.

Photo Music
PHOTOMUSIC combines images with music to produce fun and entertaining slide shows with the following five visual effects (Simple, Basic, Nostalgic, Active and Stylish). Additionally, the number of music tracks stored in the camera memory has been doubled from four to eight, and music playback time has been extended from three to five minutes per track. More personalized slide shows are also possible by transferring music from a PC to the camera.

Picture Motion Browser Software
Supplied software makes it easier to upload, organize, and search photos on your PC. When shooting photos using your camera and an optional GPS unit, the software even provides a convenient map view function that lets you sort photos by location and display their origin on a world map.

BIONZ
Image processor delivers speed and precision.

What's in the Box

• W120 digital camera
• NP-BG1 rechargeable battery
• BC-CSG battery charger
• A/V and USB multi-connector cables
• Wrist strap
• Software CD-ROM
• Note: No Memory Stick Duo media or adaptors are included.

Product Description

Capture smiles as they happen. The 7.2 megapixel Cyber-shot W120 features innovative Smile Shutter technology which photographs smiles as they happen. Built to impress, this model boasts a Carl Zeiss 4x optical zoom lens for high quality close-ups and Sony's Double Anti-Blur solution for crisp, clear images. For speedy recovery, the BIONZ image processor gets you ready for the next shot. In addition, it has Face Detection technology that detects up to eight faces and optimizes focus, exposure, and color for accurate, natural photos of family and friends.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

210 of 218 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good all-around point and shoot, April 22, 2008

By	E. Woodbury "twoody" (Washington D.C.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

My wife and I recently upgraded from our Sony DSC-P8 to a Sony DSC-W130. So far we are extremely happy. We shopped around quite a bit before settling on the new cybershot, and spent a good deal of time trying out other brands. In the end, the Smile Shutter brought us back to Sony. It sounds like there is no way it would work, but it really does. We have two young children that are remarkably hard to catch smiling. With the new Sony, all we have to do is turn on the smile shutter and the camera does the rest. So far, we haven't missed a smile with the 3 year (with teeth) and have caught a few of the 4 month old (no teeth). It makes a difference.

The other feature that has been great so far is the burst mode. With my old camera, the missing time between shot resulted in a lot of blurring. The new camera manages to focus each shot much better. We played around with some moving targets, and the pictures came out great. One major drawback of burst mode, however, is that you can't use flash. I took a bunch of pictures indoors and the quality was ok, but not great. The flash just turns off when you switch to burst mode.

The video recording is great on this camera. Obviously not camcorder quality or anything, but very good for what you'd expect from a point and shoot. The sound quality still isn't that great, but much much better from my older camera. It seems like it balances the audio in the first few seconds. If the first few seconds are loud, the whole video will be softer. If you start out soft, however, you bury the needle when it gets lounder leading to some distortion. You also can't zoom while in video mode - something they don't tell you.

The flash recharges after about 1-2 seconds, which is great. It also is pretty effective for long distances.

I like the menu configurations, especially now that I've had some time to play with them.

Picture quality is great, but I'm upgrading from a 2MP camera, so it probably wouldn't take too much to wow me. We took a ton of shots and were impressed at the level of detail when we zoomed in on our computer.

Overall, we are very happy with this camera. It has some limitations and problems, but for the money (and for being a point and shoot) it is great.

47 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Shopped around; would buy it again; but be aware of minor issues, June 14, 2008

By	Garrett Cook (Knoxville, TN) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Just bought this new from a local retailer. Did a lot of research online comparing this model to some of Canon's compact cameras. I'm not a photography buff so I wanted something that was small and not necessarily the "best" but would still take nice pictures. I really like the features that it includes. The 4x zoom is greater than most at this price point, and even some more expensive cameras. Seems to have a lot of neat features, like the Smart Zoom (digital zoom without pixelation), multiple auto focus points, and ability to shoot 640x480 video. The face detection is pretty cool and seems to work really well. I thought about getting the DSC-W130 with its 8MP resolution and editing features, but figured that 8MP was more than I needed and I'd rather do my photo editing on the computer.
One or two "bugs" I'm aware of:
1. If you shoot using burst mode, you'll find that you can't turn the flash back on in any mode but Easy mode. You have to reset the camera back to factory defaults to shoot using the flash again. Even knowing this I would still buy the camera, but I'm hoping that enough people would alert Sony to this error to release a firmware update to fix it. Otherwise I would have given it five stars.
2. When you plug in the camera with the USB cable and turn it on the lens will open and then close, so be sure not to leave it face down before transferring data.
3. This camera (unlike some) does not receive power through the USB cable so it needs to have a battery with charge in order to transfer pictures. Don't leave it on too long while it's plugged in or it'll drain the battery.

64 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great camera, April 28, 2008

By	Deanoism - See all my reviews

It's just about perfect, for me. Of course, I'd like the quality and control of an SLR in a tiny package, but for something this portable it does a fine job. The onscreen descriptions of the settings are just fantastic, the ISO (low light) mode has to be seen to be believed...very little noise, even without flash. Pictures are mostly sharp, though without flash you still have to maintain a steady hand, as with any camera. Very balanced and realistic color. It's a very intuitive camera that lets you concentrate on your composition and not worry too much about exposure, which I think is what a small point and shoot should give you. I also love the 16x9 modes for stills, haven't done any video with it. I'd recommend getting a clear shield to stick on the screen, like I did...seems very scratchable otherwise. If I lost it I'd probably get the same camera again. I'm pretty conservative with my reviews, I'm sure many people would give this an unabashed 5 stars, and I almost did, but you still get the occasional surprise when you shoot something that should have turned out fine but didn't for some reason....I think it's just where the tech is at right now, but this camera rocks, no doubt.