Sony TX7 Blue

Sony TX7 Blue
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Find the Bestsellers The DSC-TX7 was introduced this week (Jan 2010). Overall I am very pleased with it. I can finally take indoor pictures with an acceptable success rate, which has not been possible with older point and shoot cameras except in flash mode. In bright light conditions, or with flash, the camera performs comparably to other point and shoot cameras. Overall, pictures are sharp.

It is a very slim camera but the performance beats all the other similarly sized cameras I have tried. There is a light to help focus on a subject in dim light conditions.

The Cybershot Handbook manual is very cryptic about several things, but the camera performs well.

Although the manual is very unclear about this, you can save money on media by getting the SDHC class 4 memory rather than the Sony proprietary memory stick. The camera will use either type. The maximum memory card capacity is 32 GB, enough even for HD movies.

The CMOS sensor gives very good performance compared to the CCD competition, and the camera excels in low light conditions. In addition to this, the camera has a twilight handheld mode which snaps 6 different frames, and picks the best parts of each frame to synthesize a single final frame. So long as things do not move rapidly, and your lighting conditions do not vary (such as with fluorescent or sodium lights which tend to stobe) things work well. Combined with optical stabilization and the CMOS sensor, this makes possible shots that would be hopelessly blurred in the other cameras I have tried.

Another trick is the HDR or high dynamic range function. It is called backlight correction on the camera. It takes two exposures, with different exposure times, and combines the bright parts of the picture from one frame and the dim parts of the picture from the other frame. This allows details in the shadow and details in the highlights to both be visible. In practice, this extends the dynamic range slightly over that of other cameras. Flash can not be used, and pictures inside a darkened room with a sunlit view through the window are only partly compensated. Only about a stop of extra dynamic range is available, and even then the camera does not do a reliable job. I think Sony needs to work on this particular mode.

The touch screen interface only takes a few minutes to get used to, and using the camera is a joy. In general the pictures are very good, but do not compete with the pictures from a full size DSLR.

TransferJet only works if you use TransferJet enabled Memory sticks.

The LCD screen is excellent with nearly a megapixel of resolution.

The panorama function is guided by the camera; all you have to do is tilt the camera from side to side. It takes the frames and stitches them automatically. I tried it inside my home office. It managed to stitch together a nice panorama when I thought it would be seriously messed up. Instead it worked fine, even in relatively low light.

Here are the test photos: [...]. You will notice that the tiny Sony compares very favorably to the much larger Fujifilm S7000.

WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE IMPROVED

I like recording an audio comment for my pictures. There is no way that I have found to do that with this camera.

I like to judge my exposure by looking at a histogram of the picture that I have taken. There is no histogram display that I can find on this camera.

I would like the manual to be better written and contain detail such as, what are all those options in the P mode that are available? It seems Sony wants you to play with the camera until you find what you want.

There is not much control over the exposure except to take a shot, and if you don't like it you can adjust the exposure up or down. This is an awkward and time consuming process. You have to trust the camera to get it right, and there is no histogram to guide you in any event.

The zoom function relies on a tiny switch that seems out of place given that almost all other functions are available on the touch screen.

The automatic white balance function produced yellowish pictures under some incandescent lighting conditions. There really is not much excuse for this, because very inexpensive cameras are able to deal much better with this situation.

The battery charger seems to be slow compared to the Canon.

That nifty sliding panel on the front is attractive and a neat idea, but it can be a little difficult under some conditions to slide open or shut. If there were some grooves to give you a better grip it would help. Surely someone could have designed some attractive grooves.

I am not sure what the point of the little docking station is. A simple USB connector would have been just as effective and saved us all $20. Or the money could have been used to supply a much needed carrying case. In Stock. Sony TX7 Blue on deal today and Fast Free Shipping!