Pros & Cons
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- Sharp, crisp images.
- Very good performance.
- Almost no shutter lag.
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- A bit expensive.
- LCD solarizes easily.
- Problems with low-light function.
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W100 Specs
| 35mm Equivalent (Telephoto) | 114 mm |
| 35mm Equivalent (Wide) | 38 |
| Battery Type | Lithium Ion |
| Memory Card Format | Memory Stick Duo |
| Sensor Resolution | 8.1 |
| Type | Compact |
Sony made a big splash this summer with its first D-SLR, the impressive new
The W100 isn't completely unexciting. It's not much bigger than the super-svelte
You'll also find a 3X optical zoom lens with a 7.9mm-to-23.7mm range (equivalent to a 35mm lens with a 38mm-to-114mm zoom) and corresponding maximum f-stops of f/2.8 to f/5.6. In low-light situations at full zoom, f/5.6 may limit you somewhat, especially in portrait situations, whereas other cameras may allow you to open another stop to f/4 or even f/3.5.
There's no denying that the camera's video capabilities are decent, offering VGA quality at a rate of 30 frames per second. (Although for some annoying reason you can't zoom when taking video.) Still, I was impressed that the camera has 64MB of internal memory, which lets you store about 16 images. This is more than the 16MB usually found on other cameras.
One new feature that Sony hypes is its "new function guide for on-screen text explanations of the cameras' menu icons." But the company doesn't include one for Manual mode, nor are there other kinds of help menus, tips, or brief tutorials. In addition, I found that the LCD—the place where you'll be reading those on-screen explanations—solarized far too easily.
The feature I was really interested in testing was the DCS-W100's low-light, high-sensitivity mode. Yet in my real-world trials, in which I shot a few family members gathered around a birthday cake, I was disappointed at the level of colored noise in the image. It's true that the candles on the cake glowed luminously and beautifully, but in scenes like these, it would be nice to see people's faces clearly.
In the labs, the W100 performed respectably. There was just a hint of noise in both flash and daylight images, and colors were vibrant and accurate. I found a hint of fringing in the test images, but in my real-world test shot of dark branches against a bright sky, some sections of the photo had a lot of purple fringing. The exposure for most of my test shots was quite good, although the contrast was a bit too strong. The flash performed pretty well, but it did blow out some highlights.
I was disappointed that the W100 averaged just 1,700 lines of resolution, which is at the low end of the spectrum for an 8.1MP camera. But the camera handled itself quite well on my performance tests, with very little shutter lag. The camera both boots up and recycles in just 1.9 seconds, which is very good. Some of the usual barrel distortion was visible, but no pincushioning, all of which indicates a rather good lens.
Although I was impressed with the Sony Cyber-shot DSC W100's image quality, its low-light performance leaves much to be desired. It's by no means a bad buy, but it falls a bit short when compared with stellar ultracompacts such as the Canon PowerShot SD550.
Benchmark Test Results
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