Sony DSC W80 Features

The Sony DSC W80 is an eight megapixel digital camera. It has a three times zoom lens. The capacity of the zoom can be increase by up to 14x smart zoom. More and more smart zoom becomes available as you decrease the resolution you are shooting at. 6x digital zoom is another option available to you.

The lens has a focal length equivalent to 35 - 105mm in 35mm format. The maximum lens aperture is f2.8 - f5.2.

Basics

There are two special resolutions. The first allows you to produce photos that will fit perfectly onto 6 x 4" paper for printing without the need to trim the photo at all. The next is the perfect fit for a widescreen television.

For when you would like to appear in the photo there is a self timer with a two or ten second delay.

Image stabilisation is available. This helps reduce camera shake and produce sharper photos.

There are also controls allowing you to take black and white photos. Other colour options include sepia, vivid colour and natural colour.

Focusing

More and more digital cameras include built in software that helps the camera pick out a face and focus on it. The DSC W80 also includes this software. It should help you to take better focused portraits.

For close up work the camera is capable of focusing from 4cm away from the subject.

LCD

The DSC W80 is one of the very few pocket sized digital cameras to have found room to fit in a viewfinder. This can be a big help on bright, sunny days. Holding the camera up to your eye when taking a shot can also help to steady the camera and reduce the likelihood of blur being introduced by camera shake.

There is also a 2.5" LCD screen. This is made up of 115,000 pixels.

Flash

The built in flash unit has a maximum range of 3.3m. This falls to 1.8m when the zoom lens is in use. Flash modes are Auto, Forced Flash, Slow Syncro and No Flash. Red eye reduction is also available.

Scene Modes

Sony use a smaller range of preprogrammed scene modes than many brands do. The scenes available are: Twilight, Twilight portrait, Soft snap, Landscape, Beach, Snow and High Sensitivity. When you select a scene mode the camera uses what it considers to be the best settings for the shot.

Movies

You can shoot TV quality movies with sound. The maximum resolution is 640 x 480 pixels. The top recording speed is 30 frames per second. Zoom can be applied before you start recording, but not while the movie is being shot.

Advanced Features

If you would like to gain control over the way each photo looks there are a number of more advanced controls and features you have access to. These include exposure compensation (+/- 2.0EV, 1/ 3 EV step), white balance (Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent1,Fluorescent2, Fluorescent3, Incandescent, Flash), ISO (Auto, 100, 200, 400, 800,1600, 3200) and metering (Multi Pattern, Spot, Centre Weighted).

There is also a burst mode that lets you take up to 100 shots. Each photo can be taken in about 0.36 seconds.

Shutter speeds are set automatically in the range ¼ - 1/1600 seconds.