Sony CyberShot DSC-W70

The Sony CyberShot DSC-W70 camera is highly recommended, mainly because of the Carl Ziess lens which you can find on many of the higher spec sony cybershots, and if you havent heard of Carl Zeiss, ask any knowledgeable sales assistant and they will explain the importance of this over the number of megapixels!

The screen quality is great and the touchscreen is wonderful- I use the stylus provided but fingers are just as easy.

The smile shutter mode allows you to take a picture using the face recognition feature (focuses the picture on all human faces in the picture) and what it does is monitors the broadness of a smile. You press the shutter half down until the face is focused, then just wait until the person or people in the photo are all smiling and the picture will take automatically! Great for group photos.

Totally recommend this camera.

I've owned the Sony CyberShot DSC-W70 camera for less than two years but I am seriously considering replacing it. It's competent for snap-shots and can be taken pretty much anywhere but so is my Cybershot mobile phone, so I've taken very few still shots with the camera.

Where the camera does have an advantage over even the best phones is with the movie mode. At 30 frames per second, the results look really good. The only criticism of the movie mode is that it seems to speed-up the action a little when you play it back.

In terms of usability, it's easy to operate in basic automatic mode. The results in this mode are a little inconsistent however, so it's often necessary to navigate the long-winded menus to change 'white balance' settings. Conversely, macro mode is too easy to select accidentally on account of the macro button being where my thumb normally sits when I'm holding the camera.

Shutter delay is minimal and the infra-red focus assistance in low light conditions is really helpful, most of the time.

The zoom lens acts quickly and the smart zoom feature (on lower resolutions) works well to increase the range but 3x optical magnification starts to look fairly poor against the specs of the latest compact cameras.

Overall, this is a good little camera but it doesn't out-perform a good camera-phone by enough margin to really justify valuable pocket space when I'm out and about.

This Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W70 is the best digital camera I have ever owned. It has a good sized screen on the back to give you a better idea of what the actual photo will be like and the menu is very easy to use with clear instructions. The only main drawback is that it's very hard to buy accesories for, I looked everywhere for a lead and even sony couldnt find a stockist for me so if you buy this great camera (which i highly recommend) please look after your leads and batteries.