Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-T1 Digital Camera
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- Digital Zoom: 4x
- Camera Type: Compact
- Weight: 0.34 lb.
- LCD Screen Size: 2.5 in.
- Resolution: 5.1 Megapixel
- Optical Zoom: 3x
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DSC-T1 is Sony's Winning Hand... Or Is It Just a Bluff?
Pros
Excellent daytime and moderate lighting performance, size, LCD screen, overall design
Cons
Price, Memory Card Price, Red Eye Problems, What's a Tripod
Recommended it?
No
The Bottom Line:
If the price of the camera and memory cards were cheaper, this camera would be a contender. At its current price, it's hard to swallow.
Sony has entered the high end subcompact market with an apparent bang... the DSC-T1 5.0 MegaPixel monster. With dimensions that would make most technogeeks drool and a seemingly good performance when capturing those Kodak moments. However, as good as the surface features look, there are several hidden problems and costs that take the camera down a few notches in my book.
Short Take
The Sony DSC-T1 is a great camera for portability and daytime photos and photos under moderate lighting conditions. Low light and pitch black lighting conditions cause quite a bit of problems for the camera... especially with red-eye under flash use. The camera's high initial price and the necessity to buy additional accessories like a higher capacity Memory Stick Pro Duo card (this is NOT the same as the Memory Stick Pro card... there are different sizes!) quickly boost the price of the camera. At retail prices, $549 for the camera and at least another $190 for at least a 512MB Memory Stick Pro Duo card make this a hard camera for your wallet to swallow. This makes it very tough to give any kind of solid recommendation for the DSC-T1 with cameras like the Canon PowerShot S500 due for release and excellent camera like the DSC-V1 which has a better performance and a much better price than the DSC-T1 camera.
Overall, the camera really is for a very specific niche market.
Pros:
1) Size
2) Can use older Memory Stick Duo format
3) 3x Optical Zoom
4) 5 MP Camera
5) Speedy startup and photo cycling
6) Good number of features
7) Decent battery life
8) 640x480 resolution movie recording
9) Carl Zeiss lens
10) Above Average to Excellent image quality
11) USB 2.0 connection
Cons:
1) Price of the initial camera
2) Price of accessories
3) Need to buy additional accessories with package
4) Price of Memory Stick Pro Duo media
5) Red eye in pictures
6) Average to Below average low light and nighttime performance
7) Tripod? sigh... no tripod mount
8) No RAW mode!
9) Only 2 JPEG compression modes
10) Weak flash
Pricing
The retail pricing of the DSC-T1 is about $549... a pretty steep starting point for a 5MP digital camera these days. The price I paid is a combination of 15% off the retail price plus $30 off $350 coupon plus a $50 gift certificate from Dell Home and Home Office via phone order. If you want to learn of tips to try to get the best price for electronics, read my epinions article The Art of Buying... Getting your money's worth!
Basic Specs
The DSC-T1 has the minute dimensions of 3.6x2.4x0.8 inches with a weight of 6.3 ounces (smaller and lighter than most PDAs!). It has a brushed silver exterior and has a solid feel due to the exterior casing being all metal. Even with such a small size, the DSC-T1 packs in a 3x optical zoom with a fantastic 2.5 inch color LCD. The camera is even a 5 MegaPixel (MP) camera! That's not all to this camera... Sony used a Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens to the package.
The camera package includes quite a few items... these include a Memory Stick Duo card of 32 MB (this is not the much faster Memory Stick Pro Duo card!), Memory Stick Duo adapter to stick into a memory card slot, NP-FT1 InfoLithium battery, cradle, AC adapter, wrist strap, USB link cable, A/V cable, CD-ROM with minor software and drivers, and even a 115 page printed user's manual!
Overall, the only other items you consider purchasing are an additional battery ($50-$70 a pop!), a Memory Stick Pro Duo stick of 256MB ($90-$100) or higher (512MB for $190), and a card reader that accepts Memory Stick Pro/Memory Stick Pro Duo cards.
As for the layout of the camera, the DSC-T1 front is occupied by the large lens cover that takes up more than half of the front of the camera! You slide it down to expose the flash, lens, and auto-focus assist lamp as well as to turn on the camera itself. The back of the camera has most of the buttons used to control the camera. Here you have the most excellent 2.5 inch high resolution LCD display (211,000 pixel screen), a 4-way controller with center accept button (these buttons have dual functions as well), a zoom rocker, three additional buttons that access the menu, screen, and image size/delete, and a three position lever that switches the camera between movie, photo record, and playback mode. All of these buttons are quite small however. The top of the camera has the power button (to access playback mode without exposing the lens), power LED light, shutter release button, and the microphone for audio recording. The bottom of the camera has the dock connector and a battery/memory card door (which seems quite flimsy for the camera). The battery is not held in place by anything else other than the battery door... so do be careful when accessing the battery and memory card!
Note that you lack several features found on other quality and popular digital cameras. These include the loss of the optical viewfinder and the tripod mount.
Note that the cradle hold the USB connection for the camera as well as the power and the A/V out ports.
How's the Picture Over There
Well, first off, you are stuck using the LCD to frame all your shots... remember there is no optical viewfinder. At least all your shots are accurately framed although at the cost of battery life.
As for the actual pictures, the DSC-T1 performs rather well... it performs as well as Sony's DSC-V1 camera which is saying quite a bit! The pictures are sharp and clear with rather accurate color reproduction (although it does require the occassional tweaking). Noise levels are quite good for a 5 MP camera. Daytime and moderate lighting performance of the DSC-T1 is exceptional. Chromatic abberation was minimal if you notice it!
Against the Canon S50, the camera performs favorably... running similar to the DSC-V1 in most respects at least in daytime and moderate lighting conditions. There is some slight jaggies noted on diagonals when you enlarge the pictures to 8x10 inch prints... but you won't notice them at 4x6 and 5x7 prints. The minor defects in the sharpness of photos are probably due to the rather limited compression schemes on the DSC-T1. The DSC-T1 can NOT record images in RAW mode and has only two levels of JPEG photo compression (Standard and Fine)... lacking the Super Fine mode other camera manufacturers include on their cameras. The lack of a Super Fine compression scheme (bigger picture file but less loss of details on the photo) or a RAW mode for a 5MP camera is a serious oversight by Sony.
The lack of a higher quality compression scheme or RAW mode on the DSC-T1 is not the only problem with the camera. The nighttime and low light photo quality is quite lackluster. The flash is rather weak (although this was expected with the size of the camera) and use of the flash results in red-eye in every shot even with the red-eye reduction mode on! The flash is effective up to about 5 maybe 6 feet at best. Even worse, under poor lighting conditions, there is increased image noise in your photos. At best, the DSC-T1 is a decent performer in night time and low light conditions without additional lighting.
You can make prints up to 8.5 x 11 with good results although you might make out a few jaggies in on diagonal lines on prints that large. Enlarged prints may display some image noise due to the compression schemes used on the DSC-T1. 4x6 and 5x7 prints were excellent on daytime and moderate lighting conditions.
Movie mode is quite good with the same lighting issues that plague the photo mode. You can take up to 640x480 resolution at 30 frames per second (VX Fine) as long as you use a Memory Stick Pro Duo card. Movie length is limited only the amount of free space on the Memory Stick Pro Duo card. With a regular Memory Stick Duo card, you can still take 640x480 resolution video but limited to 16 frames per second (VX Standard). The video length is limited by the amount of free space on the card. Other video modes only include an email quality 160x112 resolution at 8 frames per second.
Main Features
- 5.0 MegaPixel camera with 3x optical zoom and 4x "Smart Zoom"
- 1/2.4 inch CCD sensor
- f3.5-f4.4 lens (38-114mm equivalent focal length in 35mm terms)
- 5 point AF system with AF illuminator for low light assistance
- minimum focal range of 25 cm in normal shooting mode
- minimum focal range of 8 cm in macro mode
- support for JPEG picture file format only.
- NO RAW format right now
- Holographic AF system
- 3 shooting and exposure modes including auto, program AE, and scene as well as movie mode.
- 8 scene modes including twilight, twilight portrait, landscape, portrait, snow, beach, closeup, and fireworks.
- auto ISO mode with manual selection from 100, 200, and 400.
- auto white balance with manual selection from 5 settings.
- Fast continuous shot mode with 4 shots in under 2 seconds.
- three movie modes
- 5 flash mode settings including auto, on, off, fill-in, slow sync with red-eye and without red-eye
- 3 picture/image effects modes
- auto noise reduction mode
- 3 flash compensation settings
- USB 2.0 compliant
- Multi-Burst shot where 16 shots are taken and integrated into a 1280x960 shot (collage effect).
- selection from 5 image sizes. These include 5MP (2592x1944), 3:2 ratio (2592x1728), 3MP (2048x1536), 1MP (1280x960), and VGA (640x480).
Battery Life?
In reality, the battery life of the DSC-T1 is quite acceptable. You can get up to 170 shots with the LCD on... I don't know about the LCD off rating but I've seen numbers that state approximately 200 shots. Since there is no optical viewfinder, I haven't used the DSC-T1 with the LCD off. A fully charged battery tends to get me 2 hours of playback time and 75 minutes of recording time (LCD backlight is on for the entire recording session).
Any Other Accessories
Other than prior mentioned Memory Stick Pro Duo card, a card reader, and extra battery, a case for the camera would be highly encouraged. You don't want to scratch up the LCD screen... do you?
Competition
There is quite a bit of competition in this catagory of sub-compact cameras... heck, there is a lot of competition in the DSC-T1's price range of $550 or less cameras!
I personally preferred the Canon PowerShot S400, which I reviewed at epinions.com here out of the cameras that I've had personal experience with so far.
Another possible noteworthy competitor is the S500 due for release by Canon in the next month or so.
Overall, there is a lot to like about the DSC-T1 but Sony has made some odd decisions (some nearly inexcusable) with the direction of the camera and some of the feature sets. Sony really should have allowed at least a Super Fine compression mode or even a TIFF compression to maintain the image quality of photos a bit better... especially for people who like to enlarge their photos. However, the intended audience of this camera (simple point-and-shoot consumers) will likely eat this camera up if they can afford it.
Short Take
The Sony DSC-T1 is a great camera for portability and daytime photos and photos under moderate lighting conditions. Low light and pitch black lighting conditions cause quite a bit of problems for the camera... especially with red-eye under flash use. The camera's high initial price and the necessity to buy additional accessories like a higher capacity Memory Stick Pro Duo card (this is NOT the same as the Memory Stick Pro card... there are different sizes!) quickly boost the price of the camera. At retail prices, $549 for the camera and at least another $190 for at least a 512MB Memory Stick Pro Duo card make this a hard camera for your wallet to swallow. This makes it very tough to give any kind of solid recommendation for the DSC-T1 with cameras like the Canon PowerShot S500 due for release and excellent camera like the DSC-V1 which has a better performance and a much better price than the DSC-T1 camera.
Overall, the camera really is for a very specific niche market.
Pros:
1) Size
2) Can use older Memory Stick Duo format
3) 3x Optical Zoom
4) 5 MP Camera
5) Speedy startup and photo cycling
6) Good number of features
7) Decent battery life
8) 640x480 resolution movie recording
9) Carl Zeiss lens
10) Above Average to Excellent image quality
11) USB 2.0 connection
Cons:
1) Price of the initial camera
2) Price of accessories
3) Need to buy additional accessories with package
4) Price of Memory Stick Pro Duo media
5) Red eye in pictures
6) Average to Below average low light and nighttime performance
7) Tripod? sigh... no tripod mount
8) No RAW mode!
9) Only 2 JPEG compression modes
10) Weak flash
Pricing
The retail pricing of the DSC-T1 is about $549... a pretty steep starting point for a 5MP digital camera these days. The price I paid is a combination of 15% off the retail price plus $30 off $350 coupon plus a $50 gift certificate from Dell Home and Home Office via phone order. If you want to learn of tips to try to get the best price for electronics, read my epinions article The Art of Buying... Getting your money's worth!
Basic Specs
The DSC-T1 has the minute dimensions of 3.6x2.4x0.8 inches with a weight of 6.3 ounces (smaller and lighter than most PDAs!). It has a brushed silver exterior and has a solid feel due to the exterior casing being all metal. Even with such a small size, the DSC-T1 packs in a 3x optical zoom with a fantastic 2.5 inch color LCD. The camera is even a 5 MegaPixel (MP) camera! That's not all to this camera... Sony used a Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens to the package.
The camera package includes quite a few items... these include a Memory Stick Duo card of 32 MB (this is not the much faster Memory Stick Pro Duo card!), Memory Stick Duo adapter to stick into a memory card slot, NP-FT1 InfoLithium battery, cradle, AC adapter, wrist strap, USB link cable, A/V cable, CD-ROM with minor software and drivers, and even a 115 page printed user's manual!
Overall, the only other items you consider purchasing are an additional battery ($50-$70 a pop!), a Memory Stick Pro Duo stick of 256MB ($90-$100) or higher (512MB for $190), and a card reader that accepts Memory Stick Pro/Memory Stick Pro Duo cards.
As for the layout of the camera, the DSC-T1 front is occupied by the large lens cover that takes up more than half of the front of the camera! You slide it down to expose the flash, lens, and auto-focus assist lamp as well as to turn on the camera itself. The back of the camera has most of the buttons used to control the camera. Here you have the most excellent 2.5 inch high resolution LCD display (211,000 pixel screen), a 4-way controller with center accept button (these buttons have dual functions as well), a zoom rocker, three additional buttons that access the menu, screen, and image size/delete, and a three position lever that switches the camera between movie, photo record, and playback mode. All of these buttons are quite small however. The top of the camera has the power button (to access playback mode without exposing the lens), power LED light, shutter release button, and the microphone for audio recording. The bottom of the camera has the dock connector and a battery/memory card door (which seems quite flimsy for the camera). The battery is not held in place by anything else other than the battery door... so do be careful when accessing the battery and memory card!
Note that you lack several features found on other quality and popular digital cameras. These include the loss of the optical viewfinder and the tripod mount.
Note that the cradle hold the USB connection for the camera as well as the power and the A/V out ports.
How's the Picture Over There
Well, first off, you are stuck using the LCD to frame all your shots... remember there is no optical viewfinder. At least all your shots are accurately framed although at the cost of battery life.
As for the actual pictures, the DSC-T1 performs rather well... it performs as well as Sony's DSC-V1 camera which is saying quite a bit! The pictures are sharp and clear with rather accurate color reproduction (although it does require the occassional tweaking). Noise levels are quite good for a 5 MP camera. Daytime and moderate lighting performance of the DSC-T1 is exceptional. Chromatic abberation was minimal if you notice it!
Against the Canon S50, the camera performs favorably... running similar to the DSC-V1 in most respects at least in daytime and moderate lighting conditions. There is some slight jaggies noted on diagonals when you enlarge the pictures to 8x10 inch prints... but you won't notice them at 4x6 and 5x7 prints. The minor defects in the sharpness of photos are probably due to the rather limited compression schemes on the DSC-T1. The DSC-T1 can NOT record images in RAW mode and has only two levels of JPEG photo compression (Standard and Fine)... lacking the Super Fine mode other camera manufacturers include on their cameras. The lack of a Super Fine compression scheme (bigger picture file but less loss of details on the photo) or a RAW mode for a 5MP camera is a serious oversight by Sony.
The lack of a higher quality compression scheme or RAW mode on the DSC-T1 is not the only problem with the camera. The nighttime and low light photo quality is quite lackluster. The flash is rather weak (although this was expected with the size of the camera) and use of the flash results in red-eye in every shot even with the red-eye reduction mode on! The flash is effective up to about 5 maybe 6 feet at best. Even worse, under poor lighting conditions, there is increased image noise in your photos. At best, the DSC-T1 is a decent performer in night time and low light conditions without additional lighting.
You can make prints up to 8.5 x 11 with good results although you might make out a few jaggies in on diagonal lines on prints that large. Enlarged prints may display some image noise due to the compression schemes used on the DSC-T1. 4x6 and 5x7 prints were excellent on daytime and moderate lighting conditions.
Movie mode is quite good with the same lighting issues that plague the photo mode. You can take up to 640x480 resolution at 30 frames per second (VX Fine) as long as you use a Memory Stick Pro Duo card. Movie length is limited only the amount of free space on the Memory Stick Pro Duo card. With a regular Memory Stick Duo card, you can still take 640x480 resolution video but limited to 16 frames per second (VX Standard). The video length is limited by the amount of free space on the card. Other video modes only include an email quality 160x112 resolution at 8 frames per second.
Main Features
- 5.0 MegaPixel camera with 3x optical zoom and 4x "Smart Zoom"
- 1/2.4 inch CCD sensor
- f3.5-f4.4 lens (38-114mm equivalent focal length in 35mm terms)
- 5 point AF system with AF illuminator for low light assistance
- minimum focal range of 25 cm in normal shooting mode
- minimum focal range of 8 cm in macro mode
- support for JPEG picture file format only.
- NO RAW format right now
- Holographic AF system
- 3 shooting and exposure modes including auto, program AE, and scene as well as movie mode.
- 8 scene modes including twilight, twilight portrait, landscape, portrait, snow, beach, closeup, and fireworks.
- auto ISO mode with manual selection from 100, 200, and 400.
- auto white balance with manual selection from 5 settings.
- Fast continuous shot mode with 4 shots in under 2 seconds.
- three movie modes
- 5 flash mode settings including auto, on, off, fill-in, slow sync with red-eye and without red-eye
- 3 picture/image effects modes
- auto noise reduction mode
- 3 flash compensation settings
- USB 2.0 compliant
- Multi-Burst shot where 16 shots are taken and integrated into a 1280x960 shot (collage effect).
- selection from 5 image sizes. These include 5MP (2592x1944), 3:2 ratio (2592x1728), 3MP (2048x1536), 1MP (1280x960), and VGA (640x480).
Battery Life?
In reality, the battery life of the DSC-T1 is quite acceptable. You can get up to 170 shots with the LCD on... I don't know about the LCD off rating but I've seen numbers that state approximately 200 shots. Since there is no optical viewfinder, I haven't used the DSC-T1 with the LCD off. A fully charged battery tends to get me 2 hours of playback time and 75 minutes of recording time (LCD backlight is on for the entire recording session).
Any Other Accessories
Other than prior mentioned Memory Stick Pro Duo card, a card reader, and extra battery, a case for the camera would be highly encouraged. You don't want to scratch up the LCD screen... do you?
Competition
There is quite a bit of competition in this catagory of sub-compact cameras... heck, there is a lot of competition in the DSC-T1's price range of $550 or less cameras!
I personally preferred the Canon PowerShot S400, which I reviewed at epinions.com here out of the cameras that I've had personal experience with so far.
Another possible noteworthy competitor is the S500 due for release by Canon in the next month or so.
Overall, there is a lot to like about the DSC-T1 but Sony has made some odd decisions (some nearly inexcusable) with the direction of the camera and some of the feature sets. Sony really should have allowed at least a Super Fine compression mode or even a TIFF compression to maintain the image quality of photos a bit better... especially for people who like to enlarge their photos. However, the intended audience of this camera (simple point-and-shoot consumers) will likely eat this camera up if they can afford it.
