The big attraction of the Sony DSC N2 is that fact it has a large 3" touch screen. This means there are very few buttons and dials to get used to. It also gives the camera a more sleek and stylish look.
The DSC N2 is also big on megapixels. It has ten. This means you can make very large prints, crop photos and still be able to make prints or to take advantage of a feature called smart zoom. Smart zoom comes into play when you choose to shoot at resolutions lower than ten megapixels. It increases the three times zoom the camera already offers without any noticeable decrease in picture quality.
At 23mm wide the camera is just about small enough to fit into a pocket. Without the battery and memory card the DSC N2 weighs 151g. The battery is a lithium ion rechargeable. Both the battery and charger are supplied with the camera and Sony estimates you should be able to take around three hundred shots before the battery needs to be recharged. Prolonged use of the built in flash unit or shooting movies will make it harder to achieve that sort of response from the battery.
A memory card is not included in the box. 25mb of memory have been built into the camera. This may sound like a lot, but it will not go far in a ten megapixel camera. Therefore you will need to consider buying a card to go with the DSC N2. The camera is compatible with memory stick duo and memory stick duo pro cards. It may be worth shopping around to see if you can find a decent deal on a card when you but the camera.
Aside from the number of megapixels and the touch LCD screen you may also be interested to know that the camera has manual exposure controls. These allow you to set the aperture size and shutter speed. The fact that these controls can only be accessed through the touch screen decreases their impact to a degree in my opinion.
Other features are roughly in line with what I have come to expect from a typical compact digital camera.
Standard menu options are colour mode (including black and white), metering, white balance, ISO, picture quality, recording more (this allows you to select burst mode), flash intensity, contrast and sharpness. More basic tasks can be found in the setup menu. In the setup menu you will find options such as setting the focusing mode, turning auto review on and off, formatting the memory card, downloading music to play when you are reviewing photos, changing the language, setting the date and time and calibrating the screen.
It is good to see a camera that offers some different features to the majority of its competitors. Therefore you may wish to take a close look at the Sony DSC N2.
