Digital Trends

Sony Cybershot DSC-T100 March 26th, 2007 | by David Elrich

Setup and Use

The first thing that hits you is the menu system and the high-quality screen (rated 230K pixels). I’m happy to say the days of funky Sony interfaces are long gone. The camera has onscreen menus similar to what you’ll find on the Playstation 3 and other high-end Sony gear. It’s very easy to read and follow with simple declarative statements explaining the settings. Sony gets a tip of the hat for these menus. This is a point-and-shoot camera so don’t expect many manual adjustments such as focus, aperture and shutter speed. There are a few for those want to delve deeper such as white balance, ISO as well as type of metering and focus. But this is an aim-and-forget camera so it’ll be primarily used in Auto or one of the eight typical scene modes (Landscape, Beach, Snow, Fireworks, Hi-Speed Shutter and so on). You can also pick red-eye reduction and everyone’s new favorite setting, Face Detection. With this, the camera automatically zeroes in on a face and optimizes the exposure, focus and white balance for this type of shot. A frame pops up that tracks the main subject’s face even as you move the camera to zero in on the shot. Hit the shutter and you’re supposed to get a quality portrait. More on this in a bit…

This DSC-T100 is an 8.2MP camera, meaning it captures 3264 x 2448 pixel images, something that chokes lesser-quality cameras. In this case, there’s barely any lag as the photos are saved. It can even shoot slightly over 2 frames per second in continuous mode (up to 100). This is an impressive number and you feel it as the camera reacts very quickly. It’s not a D-SLR with their typical 3 fps but for a point-and-shoot, it’s quite good. 

Since this camera is so small, there’s really no way to support it properly; you have to hold it with your thumbs and index fingers. This grip opens you to a world of shaky stills but fortunately, the DSC-T100 has optical image stabilization and high ISOs (3200 max) to help smooth out the jitters. Naturally, if you’re shooting with just available light (no flash), there’s noise galore in very dim scenes but this is to be expected with any camera that crams 8 million pixels on a 1 /2.5-inch CCD.

This camera is one of the new point-and-shoot digicams that features the Sony Bionz processor that first appeared in the alpha D-SLR. This new chip improves the overall response plus enables Face Detection. It also has the D-Range Optimizer that initially was in the alpha; this circuit improves shadow detail.

I took a load of shots indoors and out. I especially liked the grid lines that helped keep the horizons level; this was very useful given the big 3-inch LCD. To give the Face Detection a workout, I took it along to a restaurant with a bunch of friends, to see how it handled those situations. Once the images were on the PC, I cranked out 8.5x11 full-bleed prints with no tweaking.

Since Face Detection is such a big deal—for camera marketers at least—my first prints were of the jolly bunch at the restaurant. Face Detection worked as advertised, as three frames appeared to follow the faces of my trio of subjects. With the big LCD it was fun watching the frames move around the screen to match up with the people. Sony claims it can handle eight faces at a time but my party was smaller so I can’t attest to this claim. Now a little light show is one thing but how were the prints? Actually they were quite good as skin tones matched reality and focus was spot on. Now it couldn’t make up for some droopy eyes because of too much wine but that’s another story! In this case the hype lived up to the reality.

As for other shots, I was very happy with them. Simply put: this is a very good camera that will keep point-and-shooters very happy.

Image Courtesy of Sony