Sony Digital Cameras Match the Highest Standards
By Alexander Kovacs

We bought this Sony Cybershot DSC-H5 camera to catalogue our 2-weeks in eastern Europe. All I can say is WOW! We carried the camera throughout the trip and never used a tripod, but turned out over 1000 outstanding pics.The picture clarity is superb. The anti-shake technology on the camera works very well under most circumstances. The only times we had blurry images in the 1100 pics taken on the trip were when we zoomed in tight on an object in lower light situations with extended exposure.The batteries supplied with the Snoy Cybershot DSC-H5 (rechargables) lasted a considerable length of time. Without the flash, we took close to 150 pics before swapping them. Considering the camera is fed by 2 AA batteries, this was surprisingly good. Regular AA batteries are good for about 40-60 pics depending on the camera settings (without flash). The flash is surprisingly strong. I was floored at the ability of the camera to produce outstanding pics at night at extended range. We took several movies on the trip, and the video is VCD quality video with great sound. The zoom works (not digital zoom) great in video-mode, although the file sizes of the movies is a bit excessive. A 58 second video was 15 MB.We purchased the wide-angle attachment lens, and were pleased, although you can see the edges of the lens hood in the corners of the pictures. The zoom is limited to 2.5x with the wide-angle (or any attached) lens. The Snoy Cybershot DSC-H5 is sturdy, and feels substantial without being heavy. The camera bag was dropped twice to my horror, but the camera was unaffected both times.We purchased a 1 GB and 4 GB card for the camera, without knowing if the camera would support the 4 GB card. It did support it without any problem. The features of the camera were easy to use, and easy to get used to for a novice. We took many low-light pics that turned out great using the manual settings of the camera. We also were able to get outstanding high speed shots. Several of our twilight/early evening shots taken in manual and without flash looked light daylight shots without blurriness. The shutter speed is highly variable depending on the types of shots, and is sufficiently quick to take very good fast-action photos in rapid succession. http://snoy-cybershot.blogspot.com/

Pros and Cons

The Sony Cybershot DSC-H5 has several color selections ranging from black-and-white, sepia (my wife's favorite), vivid, normal, and bright. The vivid and bright were almost indistinguishable from each other, and were excellent for taking shots that appeared 'better than real life.' For instance, in the art museums, we took picks of Caravaggio (a very dark renaissance painter) and the



images came out with great clarity and brightness that exceeded our visual acuity.The camera LCD has adjustable brightness to conserve battery, and also has a viewfinder. Although, the viewfinder is not a traditional view through the lens, but simply a smaller screen showing the same thing as the LCD. To some, this might be a turn-off, but for us, it was great.The only two things I was unhappy with were the Snoy Cybershot DSC-H5 strap that came with the camera was cheap, and uncomfortable, and accessing the pictures on the internal memory was very difficult without the Canon software. It would be nice to have a feature to turn off internal memory, but none exists. 8MBs does little when you have a 4GB card installed.This camera has everything we wanted and more. We were looking for a good sized LCD, AA-battery power, high capacity storage, quick image capture, and anti-shake capabilities. I could not have been happier with this camera, and it has exceeded all the reviews I read when researching this camera. I think this one would be hard to beat at this price, or even in cameras that cost hundreds more.

Buy this camera! You won't be disappointed!

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