Current slide {CURRENT_SLIDE} of {TOTAL_SLIDES}- Best Selling in Digital Cameras
Current slide {CURRENT_SLIDE} of {TOTAL_SLIDES}- Save on Digital Cameras
4 M pixels, light, very easy to use and best of all it uses AA batteries which means that when you can travel without a large heavy charger. This is my second one, I bought the original for my wife's birthday, that has taken over 7000 images in 18 months; second one for my son at about 1/3 the price - excellent value. It handles 'into the light' shots well, good colour balance. We have sent images up to 10" x 8" for commercial printing with super results. Cons - not ready to take as quickly as some modern cameras, but great value for money. I also I have a DSC-W17 (7M pixel) much faster but heavier and that has been back to Sony twice because of dust on the sensor, no such problems with the S80.
I was challenged by a friend to buy her a digital camera for £30 that would out-perform the various supermarket own-brand cameras available for similar money - with the Sony S80 I excelled myself! Firstly, I paid only £15 for it - leaving a chunk of cash available for a memory card and some rechargeable batteries and still be under budget. Secondly, the image quality is excellent! OK, it may "only" be a 4 megapixel camera but there's more to great pictures than just a pixel count. With the size of a typical compact camera sensor being a little on the small side, actually somewhere around 4-6MP is the sweet spot when it comes to detail vs. low noise - plus it's still plenty enough resolution to print up to around 10"x8" (A4-ish) size without giving much away to modern 12+ MP models. What really makes this camera sing is the wonderful little Vario-Tessar lens. OK, maybe it hasn't ever seen the inside of a Zeiss factory but it certainly behaves in a very Tessar-like fashion: It's sharp wide open and has gorgeous rendering. I don't know what coating it uses (probably not Zeiss T* or I'm sure there would be a sticker shouting about it on the camera somewhere) but it does seem very good at rendering reds - something many lenses costing far more struggle with - and is very resistant to flare (despite my best efforts of shooting into the sun in the hopes of provoking it). If I have any complaints at all then it's that the wide end isn't terribly wide (37mm equivalent) and at that length there is some visible barrel distortion. Given the cost it feels churlish to complain though... The ergonomics of the camera are also excellent. It's not as pretty as more modern wafer-thin designs but that chunkiness actually means you have something to grip onto and one-handed operation is a piece of cake. The controls are logical and very easy to follow - even for a photographic novice like my friend, yet the camera also allows more advanced users a degree of manual control tht's missing in most current compacts - making this a genuinely useful creative tool rather than a simple taker of snapshots (although you can hand it to Granny and she can use it in snapshot-mode if you wish). Something else that this camera has (and which most current compacts don't) is an optical viewfinder. It's a little tunnel-like and tiny, but when the sun is glaring off the screen making it impossible to see it's a vital aid to composition - all cameras should have one! Overall, if I'd paid £100 for this camera in today's market I'd still think it was worth every penny - it's easy to use, easy to carry, quick to respond and takes genuinely gorgeous pictures. The fact that you can pick one up on eBay for less than the cost of a round of drinks makes this - in my eyes - one of the greatest bargains to be had. If you see one, buy it. :-)Read full review
Very easy to use and handy camera. Great size if needed to be used by children or older people. . .
Great camera......I can confidently say that it performs as good as any new 10 mega pixal camera... The picture quality is excellent...did not dissapoint me at all.....I have a Canon IXUS 100 10 mp and I can say its competative with that one..for a fraction of the price.......very pleased with it. It does what you want to do with it.
Good all round camera. Not over complicated. Easy to use without wading through instruction manuals.