| Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF | |
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Sony Cybershot DSCW300 13.6MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom with Super Steady Shot | 
 enlarge | Brand: Sony
Category: Photography
Buy New: See price in cart
New (17) Used (1) Refurbished (1) from $294.95
Rating:  42 reviews
Sales Rank: 72
Color: Silver
Media: Electronics
Number Of Items: 1
Batteries Included: Yes
Floppy Disk Drive: None
Includes Software: Yes
Optical Zoom: 3
Digital Zoom: 2
Connectivity: AV
Display Size: 2.7
Maximum Focal Length: 22.8
Minimum Focal Length: 7.6
Maximum Resolution: 13600000
Has Red Eye Reduction: Yes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 3.7 x 0.7 x 2.3
MPN: DSC-W300
Model: DSC-W300
UPC: 027242728905
EAN: 0027242728905
ASIN: B00153WWRK
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | 13.6-megapixel Super HAD CCD image sensor | | • | 3x optical zoom/6x digital zoom (35mm-105mm) lens | | • | BIONZ image processor delivers speed and precision | | • | Large, 2.7-inch Clear Photo LCD display | | • | Smile Shutter technology captures smiles |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
This point and shoot has it all - and then some. The DSC-W300 includes a wide range of convenient features, including Smile Shutter Mode which captures smiles the moment they happen. The compact and scratch-resistant titanium-coated body features an astounding 13.6 megapixel resolution, 2.7" Clear Photo LCD display, Carl Zeiss 3x optical zoom lens, and Sony's Double Anti-Blur solution for crisp, clear images. In addition, it has Face Detection technology that optimizes flash, focus, exposure and color for up to eight faces, as well as Intelligent Scene Recognition that automatically detects five different types of scenes and takes a picture with the optimal camera settings.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 37 more reviews...
 Great camera with poor lens May 4, 2008
Photo-Am (Brooklyn, NY USA)
131 out of 164 found this review helpful
I've purchased a new Sony DSC-W300 camera just a few days ago.
I mostly take pictures of landscapes and architecture so I wanted some higher-resolution upgrade for my current Sony DSC-T100 camera to be able to take more details of each scene.
Sony states that T100 is an 8 MP camera and I believe it is not less, but definitely not more than 8 MP. It is important, because having read many critical reviews on the W300's predecessor - DSC-W200 I was concerned about the actual picture quality of the new W300 and did some comparative testing altogether with my current T100 camera.
My first impression on W300 - nicely looking well built ultra-compact P&S camera in a dark-grey titanium body which seems to deserve $350 I paid for it. Because the main reason to buy this camera was to have those 13.6 MP resolution, my further review is mostly based on that criteria.
Positives:
Looks and feels like a real Sony high-quality product. Has a good 2.7" display which you can still use even in a direct sunlight, however with less visibility than the T100's one in the same light condition. An optical viewfinder is a big plus - it is tiny and cuts a significant bottom part of the picture but might be very helpful on a bright sunny day and especially for the beach photos. The menus organized as the same way as in T100 plus several new features like the ability to choose the noise reduction level, to invoke the picture's dynamic range compression so you can have more details in shadows on the highly contrast scenes, contrast and sharpness adjustments, etc. The colors are great - as the same as provided by T100 but with slightly more saturation. I read many enthusiastic reviews on the Kodak cameras especially regarding their colors quality, so about a month ago I purchased their new 12 MP V1273 still camera with HD video feature. V1273 really could take the real 720p HD video, but the colors on still photos were far away from that Sony's level, so I just returned back that camera to Kodak. To be consistent I have to say, that the poster-size printing I ordered from Kodak Easyshare web-site of some pictures taken by my T100 camera were of a very good quality. The movies taken by W300 are almost the same good VGA quality as of T100 but with remarkable lower noise which comes at the cost of slightly less sharpness. The sensor of Sony's W300 camera seems to have the stated 13.6 MP resolution, but you can not really see that because of the low lens quality and here is where most of the problems come.
Problems:
The biggest issue of the new DSC-W300 camera is its poor lens which is a root cause of all its quality problems. The thing is - you can not take a full-size 13.6 MP pictures. At most wide lens angle (1X) the actual picture's resolution is not equal from side to side: it is high in the center with a big degradation to the edges in both directions. Imaging a circle in the middle of your picture with the diameter approximately 60 percent of the picture's width. The actual resolution inside that circle is remarkably higher than on the same picture taken by T100, so I believe it is around 12-14 MP, but everywhere outside that circle the resolution gradually degrades and near the edges it is noticeably less than of my T100 with its 8 MP so I could estimate it as dropped down to 5-6 MP. If you are to take a shot of a group of people occupying the whole width of your frame then I guess those on the sides would not be happy with their blurred faces in comparison with the ones in the center. On the other hand, if you take a full-body portrait of someone with the vertical frame orientation, then most probably his/she's face would happen to be in that relatively blurred area. When you apply the full zoom (3X) but NOT the digital one, the image resolution becomes equal across the frame and everywhere is lower than provided by my T100, so it looks like 5-6 MP on the whole picture. I'm not sure if it's exactly the zoom or maybe AF problem, but it is the same on different photos. And one more thing: when you apply zoom on T100 you can set any gradation you wish, but on W300 when you release the zoom button it does not stop immediately and continues changing on its own for a while so it hard to get the zoom degree you want. It is not mentioned in the camera description, but unlike T100 in W300 you can not use zoom while capturing movies. I would assume if Sony provided an appropriate lens like the T100's one then W300 might be one of the best P&S cameras because that picture resolution issue was one and only I experienced while everything else was very good.
If most of the time you take pictures of your family and friends, your kids and pets (not a big group) who are next to you (zoom less than 2X) and place them into the middle of your photos then kindly disregard the above mentioned issue - it will not bother you, and just enjoy the incredible picture colors and clarity provided by this Sony camera.
 Techno Geeks Review. July 14, 2008
Chris M. Reibold
63 out of 65 found this review helpful
To start things off, please. Do not listen to the reviewers who said that the lens is poor. The lens on this camera, when compared to the lens on the Canon Sd790IS, Sd1100IS, and SD770IS, simply trumps them in every way - from middle to the extreme corners of the image. The canon, however, becomes very blury toward the edges giving a kind of "motion" feeling - not the sony.
Some say the canon shots look for colorful and eye-popping. To achieve shots like this, simply go into program mode, adjust the image sharpness to "+" and the color mode to "vivid" and the pictures are the same, if not better. The sony outdoes canon here by adding in a Dynamic range optimization in three steps: off, normal, or extra. With this, the camera can achieve a great range of colors in both the highlights and shadows of a shot.
Where as the sony doesn't have the "color-swap" wiz-bang functions, it does have more usefull settings like the Extra High Speed Burst setting, which can take 5 Frames per second! I tested this with my dog rolling around in the yard, and at each frame the camera had shot at such a high shutter speed my dog was stopped in time with out any blur. These pictures are only at 3MP, but are still very respectable for a camera that can fit in your shirt pocket. Also, the camera has program settings to bring out different colors in an image to achieve a certain look. Either Blue, Red, Green, or your can change the image to warmer or color depending on the shot you want to take. The green mode is very usefull for macro nature shots.
Also - 13.6 megapixels may be to big for some people (roughly 5-5.5 MB's per image), however when you turn the notch down to 8M, Bayer Interpolation goes away on the sensor, and the picture quality, in good light, starts to approach starter level SLR's, when the noise reduction is set right. Simple do a search on Flickr for "W300" to see what i mean.
One small gripe though - you cannot zoom while recording video. You CAN zoom before starting the video, but once the camera starts recording you cannot zoom in or out any further.
I also purchased Soft Carrying Case (Genuine Leather) LCS-TWB for DSC-T100,T75 T70,T25,T20, W90,W85,W80,W55,W35 black with this camera, and although the case doesn't even mention this camera in the compatibility list (I believe this camera came out AFTER this case) the case works wonderfully with the camera, and makes the already exuding quality of this product feel even more classy.
P.S. -> Nikon Is going to use the Sony developed sensor in this camera on their upcoming "P6000" flagship advanced P&S, adding to the credibility of this camera.
 Review for DSC W300 May 20, 2008
WJW
34 out of 46 found this review helpful
I bought this camera because I need a compact camera that I can fit into my pocket. The camera does have good quality material, it gave me a solid feel when I hold it in my hand. However, the downside is the picture quality. This is a 13MP camera, the picture is bit blur unless I turn the noise reduction feature to its highest level. The speed of the camera also is bit slow, my son have to hold his position for extra second after I press the shutter. The connection cable is not the universal USB cable, which is make it little inconvenience. Finally, I wish it accept SD card.
But overall, this camera looks pretty, and has above average picture quality.
Spend more time learning about your cameras... July 5, 2008
T. Duong (Dallas, TX USA)
28 out of 29 found this review helpful
To those that are blaming the lack of sharpness on lens quality... I think the lens is phenomenal considering the size of the sensor.
I myself personally own a canon 700 IS, and this camera as well. I have spent ample time framing the same shot with both cameras and changing settings on both cameras.
In my opinion the sony IS capable of creating very sharp pictures superior in both color saturation and exposure then the canon series. It just isn't as obvious to do it as the canon as the canons don't offer near the amount of manual options that the sony offers. They pretty much lock the consumer into making good pictures and the consumers think they're the greatest.
That said, even a digital SLR can take very poor/soft pictures if you don't focus correctly. Spot, scene, average focusing can cause lots of problems with sharpness.
To make the sony perform as a Canon series camera would, place the camera into the auto mode, enable the iSCN option (not iSCN+). No muss no fuss sharp pictures just like Canons with in my opinion more vivid pictures and realistic colors. At least compared to my canon 700IS.
Either way, both cameras are great, both cameras have their shortcomings as they are compact cameras, but every digital camera is capable of taking great pictures. Just have to spend more time learning about it and trying to get the best performance out of them.
Fit For The Job. September 15, 2008
Mr. H. C. Orr (Littlehampton, England)
18 out of 18 found this review helpful
I must start by saying that this camera (DSC-W300) is the first digital camera I have purchased. I have some experience with 35mm SLRs, but I wanted a versatile piece of kit that would enable me to upload pictures to the internet, print directly from the camera, and add images to my PlayStation 3 console.
The first thing I should note, and as indicated by the above comments, is that I think compact cameras are fundamentally utility devices. There are many people on the internet who criticise this model's unsuitability for longer-distance and wide-angle photography, and the lack of many video modes. On the first point, I would say this: compact cameras are designed for high quality close-up images (family and friends groups, primarily) and are not designed for vary-focal images (e.g., someone standing 300 yards in front of Mount Fuji and expecting both to be in focus perfectly). On the second point: movie modes on a still camera are a lovely bonus for a camera but are an add-on that should not be counted towards any final evaluation of the product. Sorry to sound snotty, but those are the basics.
So, does the W300 add up for the basics? Clearly, the Carl Zeiss lens is going to deliver on the bread and butter family snaps that is always going to be the brief for compacts. The 13.9 megapixel rating is useful, although the 8MP setting offers fantastic quality images that can be converted to 16:9 1080p for viewing on televisions. It is true that the .9 of a MP seems to have been lost in the implementation of actually taking photos, as the highest setting is the flat 13MP!
There are the usual ISO presets, automatic and night settings, as well as smile detection technology. Again, the brief of a compact camera has been observed well by Sony, weighing easy-of-use against range of use. This is again apparent in the neat Movie Mode: the 640 "fine" and "standard" image settings are perfectly acceptable for on-the-fly movies showing the drunken antics and practical jokes that are the stock-in-trade of the light-hearted situations that the W300 predominantly deals with. The MPEG-1 video format is also compatible with Windows Media Player and the PS3, among others.
The software that comes with the W300 enables the user to add their photos to a calendar on their PC, and even add location details for each picture via internet maps. The standard easy-to-use image manipulation features are there, again underlining the pick-up-and-play nature of compacts. Videos can be converted to WMV, too.
On the downside, the zoom is only x3, meaning for the occasions when it is needed it is not as versatile as, say, some of the Panasonic models. Secondly, the battery life is not quite what I expected (quoted in the manual at 150 minutes -with LCD panel switched on- for taking pictures alone), and the charge time for a full battery is a whopping 330 minutes. These are the only significant drawbacks to the camera that I have found thus far.
Build quality is excellent, as expected from a Japanese-made product. The LCD screen is more durable than I had expected, and its 2.7" size is more than large enough for viewing back and editing any images.
My first impressions of this product are very positive. As a compact camera the DSC-W300 is a very capable camera, with many of the intelligent design features expected from Sony. However, for those wanting a decent amount of zoom or other quasi-SLR features, it may be best to go for another model, or just take the plunge and go for an SLR instead.
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