Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T30

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http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/digitalcameras/0,39030233,49273553,00.htm

Reviewed 8 June 2006

Reviewed by Philip Ryan

Sony's T series has been a staple of the company's camera line ever since its introduction. With sleek silver (and recently black) bodies, sliding lens covers that stretch boldly across the camera front, and big LCD screens that dominate the camera back, Sony has hit on a design philosophy that resonates strongly with casual photographers.

Add to that recipe their pocketable size, easy-to-use controls and menus, and solid image quality, and you have a tasty little digicam. While Sony has been smart enough to add optical image stabilisation and keep the screen sizes competitive, we wish the Japanese giant would see fit to upgrade the T-series cameras with a faster, and perhaps wider, lens than the one included in its latest T, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T30.

Design
At 94 by 56 by 23mm and 130g, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T30 is slightly larger than recent T-series cameras. As with the Cyber-shot DSC-T9, the T30's image-stabilised lens adds some depth over other T-series cameras. Its 76mm (3-inch) LCD, compared to the T9's 64mm screen, contributes to the increase as well. Still, the camera is certainly pocketable, and its vertically sliding lens cover integrates more seamlessly into the design than its predecessors, thanks to a raised portion on the camera's front face.

The back of the T30 is black and covered in Plexiglas, giving it a slightly classier look than its older siblings. Sony has kept the straightforward menu system used in recent versions of the T series and the button layout is very similar. The main exception is that the company has switched from a cluster of five buttons to a five-way rocker for menu control.

Features
As features go, The T30 is very similar to the T9. In addition to the aforementioned screens, both include 58MB of internal memory and optical image stabilisation, which will give you about one and a half stops of leeway when shooting handheld in low light. For example, we were able to shoot sharp pictures at shutter speeds as low as 1/15 second and, at times, 1/10 second.

The internal memory comes in handy if you take advantage of the camera's built-in slide-show mode, which creates fancy transitions and lets you choose from four preloaded music selections or upload your own music. Plus, with the included cable, you can output the slide show to a television instead of watching it on the camera.

Given this camera's £280 price tag, we were underwhelmed with the 38mm-to-114mm (35mm equivalent) lens. Not only does its 3x optical zoom lag behind competitors, which are now moving up to 4x, but its slow maximum aperture range of f/3.5 to f/4.3 steals some of the thunder from the camera's image stabilisation.

Performance
The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T30 is speedy. Time from power-up to first shot is a mere 1.8 seconds, and subsequent shots took 1.3 seconds between captures in single-shot mode. With flash turned on, this shot-to-shot time lengthened to 2.4 seconds. Continuous shooting yielded 1.4 frames per second regardless of image size, and shutter lag zips through at 0.4 seconds.

Shooting speed
(Smaller bars indicate better performance)

Typical shot-to-shot time

Time to first shot

Shutter lag (typical)

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T30

1.6 

1.8 

0.4 

Casio Exilim EX-Z850

2.7 

2.1 

0.5 

Sanyo Xacti VPC-E6

2.3 

2 

0.7 

Nikon Coolpix S4

2.8 

2.5 

0.8 

Pentax Optio A10

4.2 

3.8 

0.8 

Olympus FE-120

2.6 

4.9 

1.3 

Image quality
To its credit, the T30's lens produced very little fringing or vignetting and only minor geometric distortion at its extremes, which often wasn't noticeable in typical snapshots. Exposures were generally accurate and can be modified with exposure compensation (plus or minus 2EV in 1/3-step increments) or by choosing another of the three metering modes: matrix, centre or spot.

Colours were fairly neutral and skin tones generally pleasing. A weekend outing with an inordinate number of blue-eyed friends highlighted the T30's penchant towards red-eye. Even with the red-eye reduction enabled, the gaggle of light-coloured eyes turned demonically crimson. Noise was relatively under control for a pocket camera. At ISO 100, it barely registered; at ISO 200 and 400, it became more apparent but was still under control. By ISO 800 and ISO 1,000, it was very visible, though pictures were usable, especially if you're printing at only 100x150mm.

While the T30 amounts to only an incremental improvement over the T9 -- the main difference, other than some style points, is its extended ISO range -- it's hard to complain about this fancy-looking snapshot camera.

Additional editing by Nick Hide