Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-TX1- Great LCD But Inferior Quality Photos
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Great exteriors, improved LCD touch screen,
Thumbs Down:
Photo quality is a bit let down.
Inside the Trunk:
Sony Picture Motion Browser, Drivers & Utilities, A/V cable, USB cable
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
The camera has a 10.2 mega pixels lens
Light sensitivity options are ISO auto, ISO 3200, ISO 1600, ISO 800, ISO 400, ISO 200, ISO 125. Shooting programs available are snow, gourmet, landscape, underwater, hi-speed shutter, twilight portrait, high sensitivity, pet, beach, fireworks, soft snap.
White balance presets include cloudy, flash, daylight, fluorescent light (daylight, cool white and warm white), incandescent. The videos are stored in MPEG-4 mode and image format is JPEG.
Video capture resolutions are MPEG-4 – 640 x 480 and MPEG-4 – 1280 x 720. Memory Stick PRO Duo and Memory Stick Duo type of flash memory cards are supported.
For image the resolutions are 1920 x 1080, 3648 x 2056, 3648 x 2432, 2048 x 1536, 2592 x 1944, 3648 x 2736. Flash modes include Fill-in mode, auto mode, slow synchro, red-eye reduction, flash off mode. For lens the zoom lens is – 6.18 mm – 24.7 mm – F/3.5-4.6, Focal Length 6.18 mm – 24.7 mm, 4x optical zoom and is manufactured by Carl Zeiss
Additional features include DPOF support, face detection, auto power save, built in speaker, PictBridge support, progressive scanning, in-camera red-eye fix, digital image rotation, digital noise reduction, RGB primary color filter, blink detection, camera orientation detection, automatic display brightness adjustment, direct print, audio recording, date/time stamp, cropping an image, PRINT image, touch screen control, USB 2.0 compatibility, 720p HD movie recording, dynamic range optimizer, sweep panorama technology, smile detection technology, intelligent scene recognition (iSCN).
The display of the camera is 3 inch TFT touch screen LCD. Connectors on the camera include USB, video output, composite video/audio output. For expansion cards there is Memory Stick PRO Duo slot.
OS supported is MS Windows Vista, Apple Mac OS X 10.3 – 10.5, MS Windows XP
Razzle Dazzle:
DSC TX1 is available in four colors of gray, blue, pink and silver. The camera is attractive looking at the size and the color of the camera. There are hardly any physical buttons on the surface of the phone and at the back of the camera is a three inch LCD which looks really pretty. The device is really slim which means it won’t hog much space in your pocket but it does get a little problematic when you are using it, there isn’t much space for your fingers and if you are not care full you might get your finger in between the lens.
Inside Dope:
Sony has brought a lot of changes in the new DSC TX1 and we welcome them with open hands. For example, in full resolution mode, the camera can shoot at ten fps and gives good pictures in conditions of low light. The features of the camera are great for the price it is offered. However when you view the photographs at heavily cropped or at full size you will notice they lack fine detail, artifacts/noise, etc. If you are going to take prints, it is best at sizes of 8×10 inches or lower.
The camera has a touch screen interface so there are very few buttons like zoom rocker, key to start the playback mode and shutter and power buttons. You can also power the camera by sliding the lens cover down. For everything else there are touch screen buttons.
The touch screen is quite responsive (though not as responsive as iPhone or alike) and didn’t take much time to register our touches. There is a stylus included which gives you a mobile phone like feel. The wide screen LCD gives you gutters on the right and left side when you use the full resolution on the camera. You will need to use the wide screen aspect ratio feature, to use full screen to shoot frames, which will drop the resolution of the photo to 7 MP.
The touch screen interface is user friendly and settings on it are easy to find. You get a list of shooting options when you tap the Menu icon which is located in the upper left corner and there is also a toolbox icon which leads you to secondary menu. If you want to switch to the viewfinder mode then a simple swipe and tap will collapse the open windows.
We also like that the camera gave out warnings when certain features on the device could not be used. For example when you select the Spot metering feature the face detection is not available. This is seldom available in other cameras, however we don’t blame these cameras for not showing such warnings but you can’t have warnings for everything on a camera.
There is a single port at the bottom of the device which can take PC connections or to connect the camera to TV through USB. Sony also gives you a wall charger since the battery cannot be charged inside the camera. You will have to purchase a cable separately to connect this camera to play photos or videos at 1080i resolution.
This camera is not for heavy photographers, it lack for expert features makes it only for light users and this is good for newbies or else they would be overwhelmed by the options. There is a movie mode which is capable of 720p HD-quality video with the optical zoom switched on, program auto gives you access to exposure, ISO, white balance, metering and focus. Other features include Sweep Panorama which gives you shooting in vertical and horizontal panoramas with a single tap of shutter release, Sony’s Intelligent Auto, Hand-Held Twilight, Anti Motion Blur and SCN with twelve situations of scene like High-speed shutter and Pet. If all these features are too confusing for you, just go to the Easy Mode which gives you just the basic options for shooting.
The features of the camera which gives this device an edge over other similar products is Hand-held Twilight, modes of Sweep Panorama and Anti Motion Blur. In the Auto mode, the cameras Intelligent Auto picks from one of the 8 scene types and also turns on image stabilization and face detection. You can set the iSCN to Advanced and Auto the difference is that in dim light the device will take two shots so you can choose among them which are best according to you. It takes about two three seconds to store an image to the internal memory so we are skeptical of the user with less of patience.
When it comes to speeds, the DSC TX1 is not the fastest, it takes about 1.8 seconds to wake up, 1.2 seconds break between 2 shots and additional one second if you are going to use flash. Shutter lag is very less, about 0.4 seconds in bright light conditions and 0.8 seconds in low light. The camera doesn’t have a mode for shooting continuously. The quality of photos is good at ISO 200 but when you increase it the inferiority will start to show and it will be clearer when you look at the picture more carefully. Other than this, the picture quality is good on the camera; the pictures look vibrant and have good exposure.
The camera’s quality of video too is good, and the microphone records audio quite clearly. You can also use the optical zoom while recording clips.
Nitty Gritty:
DSC TX1 is a bit expensive and we will advise you to looks somewhere else if good quality of pictures is important for you. But if you don’t mind a dip of picture quality, then this would be a great ultra compact camera that you can carry around.
