electronics Sony Cyber Shot DSC-P150 opinions and reviews

Sony Cyber Shot DSC-P150

Succeeding the impressive Sony Cyber Shot DSC-P100, this 7-megapixel camera comes equipped with the Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar 3x optical zoom lens having a 35-mm equivalent range of 38 to 114mm.

P150 has dimensions of 108.0 x 51.5 x 26 mm and weighs a very acceptable 183 g. Finding the proper menus might take some time initially. Some important features like red-eye reduction and exposures can be accessed only through the menus.

Feature wise, there are 9 standard scene modes and white balance presets. ISO sensitivity options are Auto, 100, 200 and 400. Moreover, you can explore the Flash and Metering options. A histogram and five-area multipoint autofocus are also found. Shutter speeds in P150 range from 1/2000 second to 30 seconds. Aperture and shutter priority modes are the notable omissions.

You can capture movies at 640 x 480 resolution at 30 and 16.6fps. For emailing clips, you can shoot 160 x 112 pixel videos at 8.3fps.

Store images on the supplied 32MB card or purchase the Memory Stick Pro.

Five saving option includes the JPEG format with two compression levels. (no TIFF format)
Using the macro mode is not of much use. At wide angle setting, you can shoot from a distance of 6cm and 30 cm in telephoto.

Burst mode captures only 5 pictures at the rate of 1.1 fps (P100 takes 9 at 1.6 fps).

LCD is not comprehensible in bright light and though there is an optical viewfinder, it is too small to be of good use.

Images shot in bright light showed good exposure and colour interpretation. Using the AF Illuminator, the pictures taken in flash were reasonably good though the colours did not look as pleasing as the ones captured in day light. A couple of irritants observed were the noise level and purple fringing. White-balancing presets aren’t impressive.

Booting up P150 takes 3 seconds. Recycling between shots too is impressive at less than even 2 seconds. (things aren’t much worse using the flash at 3 seconds)

Shutter lag in bright light is negligible at 0.6 seconds and even in dim conditions, it is exceptionally good at 0.9 seconds. The lithium-ion battery life is very good giving you just under 330 shots.

A lot was expected of this P100 successor. But with some features performing poorly and even the picture not up to the mark for a 7-megapixel camera, P150 ends up as a disappointment.