Although it's not marketed as such, the Sony Cyber-shot dsc-S70 (AU$2049) is a hybrid digital camera. It shoots excellent stills, but simply flick a switch and you can shoot up to 60 seconds of full-motion mpeg-1 video with sound. What's more, the Cyber-shot dsc-s70 is the only digital camera that comes equipped with a Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar lens, one of the best zoom lenses. Offsetting these appealing attributes is a frustrating user interface and shooting experience that makes it difficult to get the most out of this otherwise solid camera.
The Cyber-shot dsc-s70 looks and feels more like a film-based point-and-shoot camera than the others reviewed here. Aside from the usual knobs, buttons, and controls, the Cyber-shot dsc-s70 has a microphone on top of the camera and a baffled speaker on the side. There's also a playback volume button just above the lcd viewfinder. The included 8mb Sony Memory Stick, which is housed in the battery compartment, is inadequate for a three megapixel camera. If you select the highest resolution, uncompressed tiff, the Memory Stick isn't big enough to store a single image.
The Cyber-shot dsc-s70 is a quick shooter. It makes a pseudo shutter-click sound to let you know when an image is being recorded. Like other Sony cameras and camcorders, battery life is displayed in minutes remaining, so you know exactly how much shooting time you have left before swapping or recharging the battery.
Capturing an mpeg-1 movie is also very simple, and though playback is supposed to be a full 30 frames per second, we found its motion somewhat jerky and the picture noticeably pixilated both in the lcd viewfinder and playback on the computer.
On our tests, we found the Cyber-shot dsc-s70's images to be overexposed. Colours were pleasing, but outdoor images were about a half-stop overexposed. Indoor shots were overexposed by at least one and a half f-stops and appeared soft and flat, even when we applied a minus-1 exposure compensation factor.
One potentially useful feature, especially given the camera's ability to send images directly to some printers, coupled with a snapshot colour printer, is the ability to change aspect ratio (the relationship between the length and width of an image) from the more common 4:3 to 3:2. The variable aspect ratio lets you adjust an image to better fit print media so that you don't wind up with lots of white space.
The Cyber-shot dsc-s70's menu is cluttered with strange symbols, especially when you're paging through the program mode. The menu itself has four main areasââ,¬"Setup, Camera, File, and Effectsââ,¬"and which modes or settings are found in which of these areas seems almost arbitrary. For instance, image size (resolution) is set under File, not under Camera or Setup, and there are no specific compression selections. The Sony Cyber-shot dsc-s70's innovative video features will appeal to some users. But as a digital still camera, it can't match the others reviewed here for features, image quality, or ease of use.
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S70
Price: AU$2049
Rating: 3 Star
Company: Sony
Ph: 02 9887 6666; Fax: 02 9417 6455;
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