Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T1 Digital Camera [5MP 3xOptical]

Sony have produced an exceptional camera, and anyone who has been looking at digital will have seen the price of this camera tumble as the market changes, you can get a lot more quality for your money now than even a few months ago, but this is the first bad point- the quality is higher than most people would need for simple snapshots, that doesn't sound bad until you take into account that you will most likely need to buy extra memory cards to store pictures on while your out and before you can download/print or whatever you decide to do with them. The higher the quality you take your pictures at, the more space they take up on your memory card, therefore discover what you'll need to spend on memory as well as the camera, unfortunatly Sony products are not the cheapest.This will effect your battery too, as although it is a fully rechargable lithium-ion battery, in time that will loose capacity and an expensive replacement will be needed.

My next bad point is matched with a good, that beautiful 2.5" screen is brilliant, but its cost is that there is no viewfinder, you must use the screen to take and review your photographs. This will not matter to all but no matter what Sony say I have had trouble using the screen in direct sunlight, don't get me wrong, this was abroad in strong sunlight, I have not had such a problem in this country, (especially not this Summer), but I do think it is something worth considering.

My final negative point is that the lens is small, not that you notice on the vast majority of your pictures, it preforms well until you get to dark conditions where either your flash is not strong enough, or you simply can't use it, (I experienced the trouble in museums where flash photography is not allowed), the photos look grainy and lack the quality you get in better lighting conditions. If you think this type of photography is you there are other cameras out there that will match this cameras quality, and cope with these type of conditions much better, (think Canon and the Olympus Camedia range).

I would like to finish in apoligising for concentrating on the negatives here, this camera has loads going for it, if you haven't already, read the spec sheet, but these are things that I think may be important to SOME users, not all. Generally this camera is excellent, and would easily be five star to me if it wasn't for those small issues above. Most people will take photos that will exceed their expectations with this camera, and everyone will be amazed at the size of it, stylish isn't a strong enough word to express its size, sleekness and the overall high quality metal body it has.

The camera is very easy to get use to, the menus are fairly intuitive and there is a wide range of settings once you know where to look. There really is no shortage of options and this is where the patience is required.

On fully automatic settings the pictures aren't the best in some light conditions. This tends to be more with objects rather than people so for point and shoot snaps at a party for example this shouldn't be an issue.

However, if you have a play around, particularly with the exposure settings and you start to get some stunning photo's from something so small. You soon get a feel for whats required and there is a setting that will automatically take 3 shits at slightly different exposures if you don't want to go in and manually alter things.

As for the 32mb memory card, yes its stingy but if you look at all cameras in this sector they all come with 32 mb and the bigger cards aren't hugely expensive.

Build quality is superb, beautifully weighted and the lense is fantastic and as mentioned before that 2.5" lcd screen is class leading.

I love this camera but be aware that you made need to play with the settings to get the best reults. Because of this it was nearly 4 stars instead of 5 but the screen and build give it that edge.

My main gripe is that picture quality is poor in anything other than really bright sunlight. Taking indoor pictures with the flash, everything comes out grainy, often unfocused and with poor colour saturation. Not what you'd expect from a camera of this price.

The camera does have a really big screen which is a useful thing to review your photo's after you've taken them - you get a much better idea of what you've taken. The UI is also very easy to use and well designed and lives up to the Sony standard.

The overall lack of features on this camera quickly had me wishing I'd made the compromise of getting a larger camera, like the Sony DSC-V1 which is about the same price but has infitely more control. But if it's a quality compact digital camera you need then I've seen much better results from an Ixus.