The Sony Cybershot DSC-W50 is an excellent option for anyone who’s looking for an affordable, feature-rich point & shoot digital camera. The DSC-W50 is small, takes excellent pictures at 6 megapixels, captures movies at a decent quality, and has many of the preset shooting modes expected in a point & shoot camera. Battery life is excellent, and the zoom, although nothing to write home about, is adequate.
Some might say it’s a little thick, but overall the DSC-W50 is a lightweight camera that you can carry anywhere without it getting in your way. At 2.3 in x 3.5 in x 0.9 in and 5.5 ounces, the DSC-W50 can slip into your pocket and go with you almost anywhere.
Technical specs on the DSC-W50 include:
- 6 megapixels
- 3x optical zoom, 6x digital zoom
- Programmable exposure
- 2.5 inch LCD screen
The DSC-W50 has all of the usual presets for shooting in various environments and lightings. Spin the mode selection wheel to the correct position with your thumb, and you’re read to shoot a sprawling landscape, in snow, on the beach, or at night. “Snow” and “beach” modes make adjustments so that your pictures aren’t negatively affected by the overwhelming presence of colors like white and blue. Landscape mode adjusts your focus for wide angles and distant objects. Night mode lets you make better use of limited light while reducing blur.
Since the shutter is open for a longer period of time in night mode, I notice a lot of blur and bad focusing in my nighttime photos. This could be remedied by a steadier hand, or a tripod.
Speaking of a steady hand, one handy feature that is missing from the DSC-W50 is image stabilization. You’ll see a lot of modern point & shoot digital cameras advertise this — image stabilization is a feature that corrects a shaky hand to reduce blur. The DSC-W50 lacks image stabilization, and leaves it up to the photographer to keep things still.
The DSC-W50 uses Memory Stick Duo and Memory Stick PRO Duo cards to store your photos. I recommend upgrading to at least a 1 gigabyte memory stick, which will hold about 350 photos or 45 minutes of video.
The DSC-W50 is also light on manual adjustments. This camera excels at shooting quality photos with automatic and preset settings, but comes up short on the amount of technical adjustments that can be made manually. It does have a programmable ISO mode, and allows the photographer to adjust brightness and shutter speed, but that’s about it. This lack of manual adjustments doesn’t detract from the camera’s effectiveness as far as this review is concerned though, since it’s not meant to be a professional device in the first place.
The DSC-W50 has excellent battery life. Sony advertises this camera will last for 400 photos on a single charge, and I do not doubt them. In a year of owning the DSC-W50, I have never unexpectedly run out of juice.
The Carl Zeiss lens found on the DSC-W50 is capable of a 3x optical zoom, and the camera is able to add another 6x digital zoom on top of that. These numbers would be considered adequate for the kind of day-to-day shooting the DSC-W50 is intended for. Just don’t expect to be capturing any telephoto shots.
Zoom cannot be adjusted while recording a movie. Fore movies that require it, you’ll need to adjust the zoom before hitting the record button.
Take a look at the Flickr page for the DSC-W50 to see examples of photographs other people are taking with this camera. In fact, here’s a picture of yours truly shredding, taken with my own DSC-W50:
This is an example of an average photo, snapped without much forethought, which still turned out well due to the versatility of this camera. The pic was taken quickly, at high speed, in the snow, on a cloudy day with a bit of precipitation. The shot is slightly blurry, but overall quite suitable to send home.
The Sony Cybershot DSC-W50 is an excellent choice for the everyday amateur photographer who’s looking for a handy point & shoot digital camera to capture day-to-day events. I have been using this camera for the past year, and personally recommend it as a versatile, affordable, easy-to-use camera. If you’re interested in picking one up, you’ll find the Sony Cybershot DSC-W50 for sale in the Of Zen and Computing Tech Shop. In our Tech Shop, you can compare the best deals from partners like Amazon and Buy.com.
