While I was in dilemma whether to purchase a good digital camera or handy cam, I thought of one thing. If I talk about any family event videos, be it marriage video or that of children’s birthday, we look it rarely after sometime. But it is not the same with still photographs. I think we refresh our memories at least ten time more by looking at stills than videos. Secondly on a typical domestic occasion e.g. birthday we normally shoot hundreds of pictures, but only few minutes of video seems enough.
In view of this I searched for a digital camera which may also provide few minutes video in addition to good quality stills. SONY is a trusted name in electronics household appliances. If we talk about this product, it is equipped with Carls-Ziess lense, which produces excellent pictures. Although one can find similar features in some other competetive products, but there lies a clear difference if the quality of certain features is compared. To name a few are its compact size, excellent exterior finish, many functions on external rotary selector knob for easy options selection, and above all a big LCD screen.
It can store nearly 45 minutes video in mpeg2 format using 1GB memory stick Pro-Duo. Battery is also very long life.One full charge can give nearly 150-175 still photographs, partially with flash and day light (50-50%) respectively alongwith 5-10 minutes video also. This data may be indicative as based on my personal use, but the claimed data by SONY is also within real tested range (390 photgraphs/195minutes recroding)
I have shot nearly thousand pictures and 30-40 video clips. It is just excellent!
I understand, it is not being marketed in India, but its equivalent model DSC-W30 is same except the size of LCD screen is smaller.
The uploaded video will clearly indicate the clarity of shooting and fast auto focussing with variation of distance. The attached still photo is taken by this camera (cropped due to large size to upload)
I request you all visiting this review to rate it.