7 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
Pricey, but excellent picture quality and features make this a standout
Date of Review: Jun 25, 2007
The Bottom Line: Sony's top-of-the-line model offers unique features (face detection, optical image stabilization, 5x optical zoom), excellent picture quality and great styling.
I've had the T100 for just a few days (including a weekend of heavy shooting). I love it. Compared to similar offerings from Panasonic, Canon, Fuji, to name a few, it's expensive, but it has these following features that I find useful -- and they do work well in the real world:
- Excellent picture quality: you buy a digital camera to shoot great-looking pictures, right? The T100 takes excellent pictures indoors and outdoors; like other Sony digicams, it's especially good at taking scenery photos
- Face detection: automatically sets focus and exposure optimally for light-skinned faces in the picture; seems to work well in well-lit scenes
- Optical image stabilization ("SteadyShot"): helps you steady slow-shutter shots; saves you about 1 f-stop; only Canon and Panasonic besides Sony use this kind of sophisiticated, non-digital technology
- 5x optical zoom: the highest among ultra-slim digital cameras; zoom range is 35mm-175mm equivalent in a 35mm film camera
- Zoom optically while shooting video: I'd been wanting this since the first day (over eight years ago) I got my first digital camera (a Fuji); yes, you can zoom the lens smoothly and *optically* (as opposed to digitally) while shooting in movie mode
- 3" super-bright LCD: the regular brightness level is pretty usable outdoors, but if you're shooting in bright sunlight, you can crank up the LCD brightness even further (at the expense of shortened battery life, of course)
- Decent battery life: rated at 340 shots per charge by the Japanese CIPA standard; this translates into pretty good real-world battery life
- Some manual controls available: EV compensation, etc.
- Gorgeous design: and yes, I got this red version :)
So is this worth almost $400 for an 8-megapixel camera? For me, the 5x zoom and optical image stabilization are must-have features (I'm nuts about shooting low-light photos without using the flash, unless I'm shooting with my Nikon D70 digital-SLR with sophisticated lighting setup that reproduces a natural-light look to the scene).
Canon's and Panasonic's and Fujifilm's shoot excellent-quality pictures, too, but only the T100 has the right mix of image quality (and a great movie mode with zoom), standout styling and ease-of-use that make it a total best buy for me.
