A trendy point-and-shoot camera which bundles many good features into a compact and colourful metallic case. Read our Australian review.
The first thing you'll notice about the DSC-P8 is the fiery red casing; Sony also offers the camera in more sedate blue and platinum colours, but red will definitely make you stand out in a crowd.
Either way, the DSC-P8 is a thin, round-ended digital compact camera that has style written all over it. It successfully combines a 3.2 megapixel camera and a stack of features into a small case. It measures approximately 10 x 5 x 4 cm, making it comfortable to hold in your hand and carry in your pocket.
Sony includes a 16MB Memory Stick that can store about 10 images on the highest resolution--3.1 effective megapixels. These shots come out at 2048x1536 pixels and are suitable for prints up to A4. Another four images sizes are at hand with the smallest setting, VGA, coming out at 640x480. A click of the image size button quickly swaps between the sizes with no need to scroll through menus.
Sony has included a 3x optical zoom on the P8, which under our tests didn't perform as well as expected. Generally shots with the camera are quite good, yielding vivid colours and naturally balanced tones. With the lens at maximum zoom, there was considerable blur in the majority of the photos we took by hand. However, setting a camera on a stable base and testing this produces ideal crisp images.
The jog dial on the top gives access to the various capture settings. Scene selection is a setting that incorporates seven preset settings for a range of environments. There is a fireworks mode, which slows down the shutter speed and sets the focus to infinity. The high-speed shutter mode is effective in capturing moving objects. Beach and snow modes are also included (sadly we weren't able to nip down to Bondi or out to Thredbo to test these ones). Finally, there is the popular landscape setting, and twilight and twilight-portrait modes.
Movies are stored as 640x480 or 160x112 pixel MPEG files and come out reasonably well considering the P8 is primarily a still camera. There is the option of adding 5 seconds of voice to still shots and the inbuilt microphone picks up voice clearly. There is an adjustable speaker that reproduces the sound adequately for playback.
While there is no manual focus, Auto focus (AF) mode can be set to single, monitor or continuous. Single mode locks the autos focus a couple of seconds after the shutter button is pressed and is the default setting. The monitor AF mode speeds up the time it takes for the camera to focus by constantly updating the focus, locking it once the shutter button is pressed. This is draining on the battery life similar to the continuous mode, which continues to refocus after the AF is locked. The latter is the desired setting when shooting moving objects and worked well in our tests. Another range of focus settings helps you to accurately shoot your subject. The image menu lets you choose centre AF or multi AF depending on the location of your subject/s. Alternatively you can choose a specific focal length from 0.5m to infinity.
The Sony DSC-P8 utilises a "Smart Zoom" which (unlike digital zoom) does not lose image quality (i.e. it does not use interpolation). The maximum zoom achievable depends on the image size. On the highest resolution, the smart zoom does not work. On the 2-megapixel setting, 3.8x zoom is possible and on VGA you can achieve 9.6x zoom. While this is a good feature for Photoshop-shy people, the same result can be gained by taking a photo at a higher resolution and cropping the image. However the smart zoom saves space on your memory stick by recording only the cropped image, discarding the unwanted pixels.
An InfoLITHIUM battery pack is included which has the handy ability of being able to calculate the power consumption according to your current settings. The remaining battery time (in minutes) is then displayed in the top-left corner of the LCD.
Novice through intermediate photographers should be fond of this camera, as should those looking for a trendy point-and-shoot model that stands out from the crowd.
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P8
Company: Sony
Price: AU$849
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1300 137 669
