A note to regular readers: The reason I'm not writing in Norwegian in this post is that I've just bought a small P&S camera. When trying to decide whether to buy it I didn't find any reviews of it, neither in Norwegian or English. So I write this mini review in English for those who are trying to decide on the Sony T500 and -- like me -- are looking for reports of some real life experiences with the camera.
AFTER READING THIS MINI-REVIEW, BE SURE TO READ MY SONY T500 FOLLOW-UP/MINI-REVIEW PART II WHERE I TRY TO ANSWER MOST OF THE QUESTIONS I'VE GOT FROM READERS OF THIS MINI-REVIEW.
The Sony Cyber-shot T500
What this is not. I'm not a camera reviewer. I'm a consumer. So this isn't really a review. At best it's a mini review. I'm not particularily interested in providing detailed description of menus, functionality, number of shots per charge, scientific measurement of noise at different ISO levels, etc. Since I'm not reviewing loads of these cameras, my judgement vould be void of perspective.
But what I thought I'd do is to give you a little insight in my impressions of this camera so far.
About the camera. The Sony Cyber-shot is a point and shoot camera featuring very little manual control. This is not and is not intended to be the feinsmecker's P&S (for that group you have cameras such as the Panasonic LX3). This camera seems to be made for the design concious crowd who either wants simplicity or a camera that promises to do HD video just as good as it does still photos.
Main features:
- 10 Megapixels, 1/2.3 inch sensor
- 5x zoom lens (33-165 equivalent)
- SuperSteadyShot (image stabilization)
- HD Video recording capability. 1280x720 (720p) 30 fps AVC/H.264 (AVCHD) codec, AAC/MP4 stereo sound
- A slew of automatic modes, with some manual override (exposure compensation, ISO control)
- A choice of red, grey or black camera bodies
- Stylish design with 3,5 inch touch screen. Apart from the bare essentials such as shutter release and zoom, everything is controlled with the touch screen
- Price (approx.): NOK 2800 / USD 400 / GBP 260 / EUR 345
Looking at the features the camera seems basic, at least when it's judged as a still camera. The three features separating the T500 from the crowd seems to be HD video, touch screen functionality and design.
The box
What's in the box
Lots of manuals - lots of languages
In the box. For being such a small camera (just a little wider than a deck of cards and approximately as thick), the box is quite big. Not unnescessarily so, because it's filled with content. Apart from the camera itself, the box contains the following hardware: A battery, a battery charger, a power chord (not needed in the US), a USB cable, a video cable and a docking station.
There are also manuals in more languages than you will ever need. My box contained manuals in English, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Polish, Czheck. Hungarian and Slovakian. There's also a CD-ROM with some bundled software (picture motion browser and a music transfer program) and an expanded version of the printed manual.
What's not in the box. The camera uses Sony's proprietary Memory Stick memory cards instead of the more common SD or CF cards. Some webshops bundles it with a card, so be sure to check whether yours are before buying.
The supplied docking station will let you connect your camera to your computer with the supplied USB cable, if you prefer to transfer your pictures that way. The camera do not have a mini USB jack, so using the docking station is the only way to transfer pictures via USB. (You can of course use a card reader for tranfering pictures too)
The docking station is also what you use when you want to watch pictures and videos on your TV. You can either use the supplied video cable or buy an optional HDMI cable to do this. An HDMI cable will give much better video on a modern television, and given that one metre of HDMI cable costs virtually nothing now I'm puzzled as to why Sony hasn't included one.
You can't charge your camera while it's docked, even if you've bought the optional AC adapter. So you'll be forced to lug around both the docking station and the battery charger while travelling, unless you bring a card reader or you have a notebook with an integrated Memory Stick reader (by chance I happen to have one of these myself).
Worth noting is that although the software bundle on the CD includes video editing functionality, it's Windows only. I haven't tested it, so I don't know if it's any good. Third-party Windows software supporting AVCHD files also exists; Adobe Premiere Elements 7 is one such software package (costs around $100). If you're using a Mac, most Macs are bundled with the iMovie software. Recent versions of that can read and edit the AVCHD files created by the T500.
Halfway there: Tapping, not sliding.
Is this the iPhone of cameras? The stripped down and buttonless appearance due to the gigantic touch screen makes a comparison with the iPhone inevitable. The question is: Is it the iPhone of cameras?
The answer is: No, it's not. Yes it's touch based but the GUI is as inelegant as they come these days. The T500 menu system is far less graphical than the iPhone's. It's largely text based and hierarchical and rather confusing for at newcomer to the camera. (I imagine that the menu system will be familiar to owners of previous Cyber-shots)
While the screen's touch sensitive, the touching isn't used for anything useful other than registering clicks. For instance, zooming a picture is neither gesture based nor a two finger operation like the iPhone has. You have to tap + and - buttons several times. When using exposure compensation, the natural reaction is to try to drag the compensation slider around. But again you have to click + and - buttons. Now, a user interface is traditionally largely about clicking, so this isn't bad in and of itself. But there are areas where other paradigms than clicking could have been used with success on this device (sliding, navigating, rotating, etc.). There are places where Sony has tried to implement sliding, but fails. In theory you should be able to navigate around on a zoomed picture in playback mode by sliding your finger, but the navigation is short and erratic.
The best use of the touch interface for me so far is the ability to guide the autofocus engine and setting the wanted focus point with your thumb while taking photographs. This is something different from a simple digitalization of analog buttons. Another good thing is that the screen can be used for providing buttons when you need more than you usually do. When recording a video the shutter release functions like a camcorders start/stop button. But while recording video, you can still grab still shots. This you do by tapping a button on-screen.
But apart for these few highlights the touch capability is barely touched upon by Sony's engineers (pun intended). The main attraction of the touch screen is that the screen has got the space it needs to become bigger. Measuring 3.5 inches the screen is big and beautiful. And most important: Since this camera tries the best it can to be a video camera, the screen has the size it needs to be a good screen both for recording and playback. Hopefully Sony will have learned more about what they can and should be used for and how they should be used in the next generation of touch screen cameras.
But the camera looks good, doesn't it? Oh yes it does. If you ignore the user interface on the touch screen, the camera is the iPhone of cameras. When the lid is closed the front of the camera is completely minimal. A smooth surface and a Sony logo. That's it. The back is just as bare bones, since the back practically isn't anything but a screen. And the top plate has centered all it's functions around the release button; zooming is there as is the function that switches the camera from photo to video mode. The on/off button is almost invisible.
In short this has to be one of the most minimalistic and beautiful cameras ever made (I bought the red version; I usually mislike red, but I think it looks good on Ferraris and this camera). When the lid is opened some of the minimalistic apperance disappears: Opening the lid exposes a lens, a flash and (in this case) stereo microphones. But you really can't fault a camera design for being a camera :-)
But most important is the fact that it fits in a pocket (although it will bulge a little if you wear real tight jeans) and it'll fit even the most minimalistic purse. It's portable and it looks good.
The Sony Cyber-shot T500 is perfectly capable of beautiful pictures -- even using ISO 400.
100 % crop of the above picture. Not noisy in a way that's disturbing at all. Noise reduction is very visible, though, and viewed at this magnification the picture seems a little soft. But that's only apparent when you're pixel peeping.
Image quality. As I said I won't be trying to measure the quality aspects in an objective or technical way. What I can say, however, is that the image quality is satisfying. It hasn't got DSLR quality but no P&S has (with the possible exception of the discontinued Sony R1 and the Sigma DP1).
I've tried using the camera in a variety of lighting conditions, and I feel that it delivers good pictures all around. The camera performs best in good light and pictures become noisy in low light (full auto brings the camera to high ISO levels when needed).
If you look at your pictures at 100 % magnification, you'll notice
that the pictures are victims of relatively heavy handed noise
reduction. This may annoy the most zealous pixel peepers; the rest of
us probably won't notice the noise reduction or even care about it if
we notice.
In my experience visible noise at high ISO and even visible noise reduction at high ISO is quite common for digital P&S's. So I'm not surprised about this. I would judge this camera as a camera of normal 2008 P&S quality: It's light years ahead of cell phone cameras while it will be beaten on IQ by any modern DSLR.
A little more disturbing is the hit-and-miss quality of auto white balance: If you're adventurous and turn flash off indoors, you will discover that the auto white balance function struggles now and then. What's interesting -- and I'm sure it's not a feature -- is that the camera sometimes selects different white balances if you snap several exposures of the same motive. If you really care about WB and flash off, you're better off selecting one of the preset white balances (fluorescent, lamp light, cloudy, etc).
You might say that this is a weakness, but I'm not sure if it's a real weakness: If you're the kind of person that turns off flash and fiddles with ISO levels, then you're also the kind of person who should prefer to set your own white balance.
I'm not making excuses for Sony here, I'm just saying that I'm not sure this weakness will be relevant for that many users.
Video quality. I haven't used a video camera since the DV cameras of the mid-90's. Compared to those cameras video quality is just stunning (and I remember how good DV was compared to Hi-8)! I really can't fault it at all. I'm not suggesting that you could film the next Barry Lyndon on this camera. You can't. But for recording memories, typical family stuff and travel snippets, this camera will do.
You should note this before deciding on the T500: The maximum length of clips are 10 minutes but there's no limit to the number of clips you can store on a Memory Stick except for the size of the Memory Stick itself. You can take still photos while you record videos, but for some reason maximum three pictures per clip. Since the still images are 1280x720, just as the video is, you could just as well extract as many frames as you like from from the video itself.
I'm not bothered at all by the 10 minute limit -- in my opinion video should be edited anyway. But if you're thinking of recording your children's school plays in their entirety you may be bugged by this limitation.
The audio is better than audio from any other P&S I've tried, largely due to the fact that the camera has stereo microphones. In that way audio is remarkable. The microphones seems to have more than enough sensitivity for covering a normal living room range. I guess that's the arena this camera is targeted at. I'm satisfied with the sound, but just as you shouldn't expect Barry Lyndon video quality you won't get a professional grade sound mix from the built-in microphones. Both audio and video seems to be of good amateur quality, and that's what it's supposed to be too.
On the whole the video functionality is great. What's most amazing is that you can get all this into a package that doesn't weigh more than a cell phone and is the size of a deck of cards. The battery is so small that you can bring a spare in your wallet! Home video have come far since my days with DV cameras in the 90's.
I'm a novice with video editing software, so I haven't been able to put together anything useful for you to see yet. But take a look at the video by Michaels Niles (embedded here or take a look at the full size HD version on Vimeo). The quality is amazing considering the video's shot with a P&S camera.
Battery life. This is the area where I think the T500 will get most complaints. The manual states that the battery should be capable of 160 shots as measured with the CIPA standard. But I can assure you that you won't ever be able to get 160 shots from it. That's not because Sony is lying to us, but because the big screen and the video capability will make you use this camera very differently from the CIPA tests.
You will be recording video. A lot. Video recording virtually bleeds the battery. The processor works hard to update the screen continously, encode all that video and move it to the memory card. Then you'll play it back. It's easy to forget is that playback of video consumes nearly as much power as recording do. Playback is essentially recording in reverse. So if you shoot 15 minutes of video, play it back once or twice and snap a dozen shots, you'll probably find that your battery is drained. I can't really fault Sony for this, because a usage pattern like that is very different from how I handle my SLR and previous P&S cameras. Battery life should therefore not be the factor that puts you off the Sony.
If you don't think you'll use the video function at all, you'll
probably be satisfied with battery life and have little or no need for
a spare battery. But let's face it: If video didn't interest you, you
probably wouldn't spend this amount on what's at core is a satisfying
but unexceptional P&S still camera. You will be using it as a video camera and you will be using that capability a lot more than you probably think. Therefore you should buy an extra battery together with your camera. I didn't and I regret it already.
Summary. In the end it all comes down to this: If you're in the probably not too big group of people who want a decent P&S camera with good HD video recording capability, then you're also willing to accept this camera's shortcomings (of which battery life is the biggest). If you don't care about video, there are equally good still cameras to be found at 2/3 or less of the T500's price.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Great HD Video recording capability |
Lots of functionality drains battery; comparatively long charge time (approx 2 hrs) |
| Large, beautiful screen | The touch interface's shortcomings becomes apparent when you delve into the advanced functions. They're not hard to use; it's just that the iPhone've shown us how touch could be use to make things easier. I also suspect that the touch screen will become difficult to use in cold weather (as is the case with the iPhone). |
| The minimalist design isn't just about great looks: It helps make this the easiest to use P&S I've come across (as long as you use it as a P&S or camcorder without using any advanced functionality; when you dive into the menus, the camera becomes a little more complicated to use) |
Updates.
- I've noticed some purple fringing, but within acceptable levels.
- I've started a set over on Flickr containing test shots from this camera (stills only).
- In full auto, the camera never selects higher ISO than 400 even though it's theoretically capable of ISO speeds up to 3200.
- Yep, the battery life will drive you crazy. Buy a spare.
- The battery door is a little flimsy. I've experienced several times that it flips open when it's in my pocket.
PLEASE PROCEED TO MY SONY T500 FOLLOW-UP/MINI-REVIEW PART II WHERE I TRY TO ANSWER MOST OF THE QUESTIONS I'VE GOT FROM READERS OF THIS MINI-REVIEW.
