Sony DSCW800/B 20.1 MP Digital Camera (Black)

I am an amateur photographer and own three DSLR cameras with a selection of lenses. However that collection does not eliminate the need for a handy item for just daily needs. I keep this one especially in my car's glove box as a reserve for occasions which require something better than my cell phone camera. For that purpose it meets my expectations and even exceeds it. Yet, this is still a snap shot device with a relatively low price tag and therefore a DSLR level quality (like background blurring, high shutter speed, high level of low light performance etc.)should not be expected. Pros: -Lightweight slim and stylish design: It can fit in small spaces and look and feel like a high quality item. -USB charging ability: That is one of the selling points for me. I keep it in my car and I don't want to run out of power any time or go through the hassle of removing the battery and charging it separately ,which requires carrying the charging adapter all the time and also the ability to plug in that adapter. Instead. all I do is to connect it to my 12V car USB charger and it pretty quickly accumulates good amount of charge level... It comes with a wall adapter (5V 0.5A) which connects to a detachable USB cable (so you can use the cable and attach it to any USB charger). But be careful about the USB cable. The standard USB-micro B cable that charges most mobile devices do not work for this type. If you need a replacement or an extra you need to buy a USB-UC E6 cable. -Easy menu mode: Practicality should be the main focus in a snapshot device and even my grandfather could get through this menu. One of the most user-friendly interfaces I have seen so far. -Panoramic shoot ability: That was a surprise for me. I had not read the product description in detail before buying and that was such a handy function. I used to take panoramic photos by taking tens of photos with my DSLR and stiching them with a software which was both difficult and time consuming. This function does it instantly and produces comparable quality photos. -5X optical zoom: When it comes to zooming, in photographic terms, the less is often more. The best lenses even come with no zoom at all. However for a practical item like this, zoom is essential and 5X is a good range for the optical zoom (it is also critical that you compare the optical zoom capacities of devices and not the digital zoom before making a judgement.) -Image quality: As I said above, it does not match the quality of a DSLR and I don't care about the high pixel size either. For cameras with small sensor sizes like snapshots, it is actually better to get a low MP device for sharper images, but this one not bad at all especially in daylight. HD Video quality is also good but again depends on the light... -Price: the $78 price tag as of august 2014 makes it one of the most affordable snapshot cameras in the market. You can get better deals from time to time but this is quite appealing too. Cons: -Low light performance: Again, I want to stress that I am not expecting professional quality from this device, but I found the low light performance moderate at best. The noise was somewhat irritating even with flash. -Slow shutter speed: It has a continuous shooting mode which is supposed to take multiple frames in a short time as long as the shutter button is depressed. However this device has a long long refractory period between shoots that it is not even worth bothering with that mode. You need to decrease the image quality 3 steps to be able to notice some multiple shooting effect and that is not worth it. So if you wish to take a photo of a flying bird or a running person or a passing by car, you don't have much choice to take multiple photos and decide later. -Zoom buttons: I like the zoom to be a ring style beneath the shutter button but this is like a plus and minus at the back which is not very convenient. -No optical viewfinder: This is not a problem for this model only. Most recent cameras sacrifice from an optical viewfinder and all you get is a digital image on the screen to help you adjust your photo before taking it. First of all it does not give the sense of taking a photo but more importantly digital screen viewfinder drains battery and also performs bad in bright light. -Video focusing sound: While recording video of a closely located object (where there is a constant need to re-adjust autofocusing) and if the surrounding is silent, you can hear the sound of focus adjustments in your recording. But as I said that is only obvious in full silence and for short distance recordings. Overall you like it or not depends on your expectations. For me it is a handy and adequately performing device with quite useful features. I am happy with this purchase

I really like this camera, though I think there is some room for improvement. It takes very nice still photos, which according to my linux box are 19.9 MP. Weird, but nothing to complain about. My personal rationale: Things seem to be hit or miss, but for my general purpose it is not bad. I was going to buy a new phone, e.g. LG g4, to record my exploits into the mountains. The HTC one m8 camera is pretty weak. But I got this instead. Two devices is less than one in this case, but it's not so bad and saving $500 never hurts. So I bought my first dedicated camera. Ergonomics: The size is quite nice as it easily fits in my pocket for long hikes and other outdoor activities. I love the inclusion of a USB standardized charging port, as it makes things a lot easier. I don't know why Sony didn't make it a micro usb like most other mobile products these days, but whatever. One extra cable, but having the device be chargeable via a portable battery bank is very nice. Also includes a standard SD card slot, which I would strongly recommend adding to your cart. Internal storage is not sufficient unless you take 3 photos and visit a computer. The size of the maximum quality photos are about 7.5 MB. Screen: Essentially worthless. There is no way to measure the quality of the photos through the built in display, aside from tremendous blurriness. Take to your nearest HD monitor to gain better appreciation... Photos: I went on a small hike to test this out before a much larger one and attached a few photos. My opinions are that outdoor photos come out quite nice, but zooming in on regions makes them quite grainy. I analyzed merely with my eyes and a 4k monitor, which may lack professionalism for some. Nevertheless, I don't really see much reason to complain. A minor gripe is that they shoot in 4:3 aspect ratio vs 16:9. Indoor photos are much more variable. I have taken a few good ones, with flash and mildly close range necessary to achieve this goal. Others look very washed out. View finder doesn't help so be wary. Panorama is a pretty bad feature in my opinion. It captures more, but with less. What I mean by that is the vertical height of my resulting photos is 1080 pixels, whereas standard photos are over 3800. Thus they looked washed out. You can also adjust brightness in the menu, but I usually default to 0 unless in exceptional circumstances. Video: I don't use this much, as 720p is quite low by today's standards. Even my bad phone camera does 1080p, so it's not for me. Maybe for some this will apply. Cost: Excellent. For $80, I am happy with my decision. Sony is the king of camera sensors, so I thought this was a good buy for my purposes. Just be wary of the above comments.

I bought this camera mainly for work purposes. I have a Cannon Rebel XS DSLR, and this camera in no way compares to the quality of it. Of course I wasn't expecting it to. For this review I will focus on indoor shots of about 25 feet or under. I will start by saying low light, and even no light, performance is excellent. I tested it in my completely dark bedroom and the picture turned out as if it were brightly lit. I will say now that the colors do trend on the warm side. Subject tracking is a nice feature, great for moving objects, such as pets, and for people who have had to much coffee. It has an "Easy Mode" which is great for good casual shots, but I think that it's a little TO simple. It simplifies the menu choices to one: large images or small images. I personally think they should had left all of the sizes selectable in this mode. Video is limited to 1280x720, but this is more than enough for close up movies. The rated battery life is fairly short at 100 minutes, but this is most likely due to the viewscreen. Additional batteries are, as of this review, under $13 for the Sony battery NP-BN1, and half that for generics, which is very inexpensive for a camera battery. It charges via a special USB cable, which I hate, instead of a standard USB Type B which all small electrical devices seem to charge from, so be careful that you don't damage it. The included AC Adapter connects through the USB cable as well, and outputs 0.5A, so it is no faster than charging it from any other USB source. All in all I would say this is a great camera for taking pictures up close, under 20 feet ideally. It's compact size, portability, features, and low cost make it a great camera for close up shots. It's not close to a DSLR quality, and I wouldn't think about using it to record once in a lifetime memories, but it's also less than 10% of the cost of a DSLR, and a great item to have around.

Love this camera

I ordered this camera with high hopes after seeing it was the #1 selling camera on Amazon at the time of purchase, and after reading many 4-star and 5-star reviews. The camera I received was clearly the same product shown online, but I feel like I am reviewing an entirely different product than the one I expected to receive. I'll start with what the camera does well: it does fit in the small hip pocket of my backpack, which was a prerequisite as this was to be my camera for long-distance backpacking trips. It does have good battery life, as I was not able to deplete the battery on a 3-day trip with probably 100+ photos taken. It does have a useful, though low-resolution panorama mode for those who don't want to make the effort to combine multiple photos using image processing software. Beyond those few features, I found the camera to be relatively lackluster and uninspiring. My beef with this camera started the very first time I turned it on. I was greeted by a persistent and distracting screen flicker that I have not seen in any other camera. I am surprised others have not mentioned this, though perhaps I received a defective unit. I know it wasn't just my eyes, I showed it to my wife and she agreed it was flickering. After several hours of use, the flickering seemed to mostly go away, but not entirely. Beyond the flickering, I felt the camera simply took poor photos compared to other cameras I have had, even those with 1/4 to 1/2 the resolution of this one. Pictures were prone to blurring, I would say this has the least effective optical image stabilization of any point-and-shoot I've owned. Also I found the camera to be very prone to silhouetting and washout in outdoor use, and again this is not simply operator error, I am comparing to other similarly-priced cameras I have owned over the years (including various Casio Exilim and Fujifilm FinePix models). The camera claims to shoot 20-megapixel photos, and I'd believe it by the file size, however none of the 100+ photos had the crisp look when zoomed in to 100% that I expect for a printable photo any larger than 5" x 7". I found the menu to be clunky, and many basic features like shutter and aperture settings, manual focus (or at least a user-selected Macro mode) were either lacking entirely or buried in some menu that I couldn't find when I needed it. Again I only used it for 3 days, so perhaps these features were overlooked, but at the least I can say that finding them was unintuitive for me. I know it's a lot to ask from an entry-level camera, but even for basic use I am not comfortable with a camera that seems to miss 2 out of every 3 shots. For my money, I think I can do better, so I returned this one. I will be trying a FujiFilm FinePix T550 next, which sells for the same price but has a 12x zoom, and (I expect) better image stabilization. I would advise anyone who intends to use this outdoors, or who doesn't have rock-steady hands when shooting without a tripod, to look elsewhere. I suppose this camera works well for some, but I can't offer any more than a tepid recommendation that it does work

I wasn't expecting much from this, I only wanted a camera that was a) cheap and b) would provide a better quality image than the average smart phone camera. But the image quality is truly amazing. I will upload a few customer images of my hiking trip as an example. An SD card is absolutely necessary, the internal storage can only hold 3 maximum quality images. I did have one problem with the camera, the battery that came with it refused to take a charge. Amazon made up for this by offering me a 40% refund to buy a new battery, and the battery was much cheaper than the $31 refund I got so this issue wasn't even reason enough to take a star off. Overall great camera and great customer service from Amazon. I've only owned this for a month and only used it for 2 days for a hiking trip so I can't speak on long term survival of this camera. I will update my review if I have any other issues. Be sure to check for my customer images if you want an idea of the maximum image quality.

I own an older model of this camera and used it constantly for 6 years with no problems, but it is starting to have a few issues, so I bought a new, updated one. BIG mistake. The battery has NEVER fully charged after the first time I charged it. The settings are so confusing I can't figure out how to get it to do what I want. The software that came with it has not worked correctly. With the old camera, I plugged it in, it asked what I wanted to do with the pictures, and it worked. After putting my old card into this camera and then putting it back in the old camera, the old camera software no longer worked right (and all of the instructions, for some reason, turned to German.) I kept trying to figure out the new camera and kept waiting for a techier person to help me out with it, but nobody seems to be able to figure it out. It takes great photos sometimes and horrible, blurry ones more often. The battery is dead more often than not and I have to use the old camera anyway. It is way too easy to turn on or off by mistake--although the button is in about the same place, it is easier to push it and I turn the camera off by mistake in the middle of taking a picture. I LOVED my old camera (and still use it even with the small problems.) This one was a waste of money. I wish I'd sent it back when I ordered it six or eight months ago instead of trying to figure it out. I wanted it to be as great as my older Sony, and I'm really disappointed.

I am not a professional, but take a lot of pictures for personnel use, both at home and traveling. I like the smaller point and shoot cameras which can be carried in my pocket or a small case on my blet. My previous two cameras were high dollar point and shoot, but too complicated to operate quickly even on iA. The screens were touch screens which is not conducive to carrying in the pocket. Also my previous two cameras had the fan type shutter which began sticking after only a few months use until they both finally stuck at half open. Although I have had the DSCW800 Sony for less than two months, it has met all my expectations. It is light weight, easy to operate, takes excellent outdoor pictures, and thin enough to carry in my shirt pocket. There is a two or three second delay between pictures. I have had no issues with the battery. My one recommendation is to install the wrist strap and use it. Maintaining a safe grip on this small camera could be a problem, especially if damp with moisture.

ESTABA MUY BIEN LA ENTREGA RAPIDO Y COMPLETO

Purchased this camera for my 11.5 year old for Christmas. This is her first grown up camera and it is easy for her to use. It is small and slim...so easy for her to carry around. We did pick up a case to protect the camera. She has been taking many photos of our dog as well as the outdoors. She is very happy with the camera!

I love this small camera. I used it in my holidays and I have wonderful pictures. It is very easy to carry around, It takes great pictures in any weather and light. The zoom is also very good for flowers, the moon, sun and other objects that I thought would not be possible to photograph with this camera. I am extremely happy with this product and I recommend it to everybody who needs a very easy camera to point and shot.

Increíble cámara uno pensaría que por el tamaño, que es muy compacta no sería de calidad y oh sorpresa me equivoque al cuestionarme antes de comprarla.Sinceramente saca mejores fotos que muchos celulares de gama media que hay en el mercado solo se necesita configurar adecuadamente para cada ocasión que se encuentra uno.El zoom de 5x es perfecto para tomas no muy lejanas y al precio que está no se puede pedir más.Sony siempre ha sido marca de calidad. El único defecto y por el cual le doy 4 estrellas es la fuente para usarla ya que es de batería recargable y la que trae te dura aproximadamente 100 minutos encendida o unas 300 fotos dependiendo del manejo que le de uno.

Seems to be a good camera. Pictures aren't as clear as I expected them to be, but I've only taken a dozen shot or so. Can't really give an honest opinion as I have used the camera very little yet