Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W570 16.1 MP Digital Still Camera with Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar 5x Wide-Angle Optical Zoom Lens and 2.7-inch LCD (Silver)

What customers say about Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W570 16.1 MP Digital Still Camera with Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar 5x Wide-Angle Optical Zoom Lens and 2.7-inch LCD (Silver)?

1. 77 of 79 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Slight victory of form over function, July 25, 2011

   By 

   A. Whalen “Car Buff, Gamer, Reader, Music Fan… (Raleigh, NC, USA) –
   
     

   Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)

   This review is from: Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W570 16.1 MP Digital Still Camera with Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar 5x Wide-Angle Optical Zoom Lens and 2.7-inch LCD (Silver) (Camera)

   With such a broad variety of nice point-and-shoot cameras in this price range one gets to be picky, and a couple of relatively minor things is all that’s wrong with this camera. I am a pretty big Sony fan and own, or have owned, many items from them – headphones, laptops, cameras, and of course, PSP and PS3. This one is a bit of a let-down. Not a BAD camera, just clearly not the best, and clearly not up to the standard of Sony quality and construction. Here’s why:

   – The marketing photos look cooler than the camera does in person. The rear of the case is dark gray plastic; only the front half is silver.
   – The shutter release button is a small, low-profile rectangle. Every other camera ever made has a circular shutter release that protrudes from the top, making it very easy to locate without looking for it. This one is smooth and low-profile so it’s not as easy to just blindly grab and shoot. I just can’t fathom why they would have made a button that’s harder to locate by touch…
   – Untrue to Sony’s standard, the body feels light-weight and plasticy. The buttons (power, shutter release, zoom) feel kind of loosely fitted not solid and firm. Very un-Sony-like.
   – The flash is overpowering for subjects up close. Subjects across the room (or the room itself) turn out pretty good colors with flash on.
   – The battery life is truly abysmal. I took around 50 test pictures and one short (<15s) video and found that a fully-charged, brand-new battery was completely flat dead. I’m hoping this was some fluke with the first charge of the battery or something, although I haven’t observed that in other cameras.

   But does it take good pictures?

   Yes!

   Focus works well even while zoomed all the way in. Image stabilization works brilliantly. Low-light images turn out pretty well – obviously you need a steady hand and it won’t take a sharp picture of a crazy kid chasing the dog across the room with only table lamps on, but if the kid stops for a second, you can get a good pic. Colors are very life-like. In pictures taken outside, I got about 19/20 clear and sharp and the one that wasn’t sharp was only because it snapped a second photo while I was taking the camera down to put in my pocket – so, essentially 100% sharp clear focus as long as you’re pointing at the thing you want a picture of. Indoors I’d say about 2/3 of the pictures came out perfectly clear in very low, incandescent light with no flash.

   It’s so-so because of the aforementioned form factor issues and dreadful battery life. Taking good pictures is meaningless if the thing goes through 2 or 3 batteries in a single afternoon outing. I’ll revise my rating up to 4/5 if in subsequent use I find that the thing has more acceptable battery life; but, fewer than 100 pictures is just crazy. On other point-and-shoot cameras, even some where there are complaints about battery life, I’ve been able to take 200+ pictures, half indoors w/ flash and half outdoor with zoom heavily used, and 5-10 minutes of video, and the battery still indicates full charge. This issue alone could be a deal-breaker for this otherwise OK camera.

   ==============

   Revising the review up from 3 to 4 stars. Although the first use did have a fully-charged battery, the same battery, as well as the backups I bought, do appear to deliver a more standard, expected usage in the camera – several hundreds of photos over a couple of weeks. Glad that that was just a new-battery fluke!

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2. 35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Good value for the money, July 25, 2011

   By 

   trhouse (California) –

   This review is from: Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W570 16.1 MP Digital Still Camera with Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar 5x Wide-Angle Optical Zoom Lens and 2.7-inch LCD (Black) (Camera)

   I have to disagree with some of these reviews regarding the build quality of this Sony. I have owned HP, an Olympus, two previous Sony’s, two Nikon’s, and two Canon’s. They were all 100% plastic bodies like the DSCW570. I carried them in pants pockets or a shoulder bag. Some were dropped more than a few times onto garage or concrete floors. None including this Sony ever suffered any damage because of the plastic case.

   If they broke, it was inside. The Nikon was dropped and the lens failed to extend. An earlier Sony became intermittent. They were sold or given away on Craigslist or BCKS. I carry this Sony in my pants pocket along with a cell phone. It has never been a problem.

   I went away from Sony before because I was tired of paying a lot for their proprietary media sticks but there were features of those Sony’s I always liked. For example, the infrared focusing beam allows composing in total darkness something my HP, Olympus, and Nikon’s could not do. I liked a feature which showed up in my second Canon. It automatically would switch to Macro mode when necessary and would automatically select a Scene mode in Auto mode. In Program mode, it allowed adjusting the exposure, metering method (spot, central area, multi-area), etc. The Sony does the same.

   All the other cameras were 3 to 1 optical zooms or less with similar f stop range to the 570 so I see nothing unusual about that. Some would automatically switch to digital zoom so it was necessary to watch out for that happening. The 570 does not do that. One of the earlier cameras had a battery compartment door switch which caused it to open when sliding it into your pants. I would reach for the camera and end up with a handful of batteries. The 570 does not do that either.

   Some cameras have the flash near the upper left side of the camera unlike the 570 which has it in the middle. I used to accidentally put a finger over part of the flash when holding the camera with two hands. That does not happen with the 570.

   What could be improved is that the electrical connector on the bottom of the camera is completely exposed unlike some cameras which have a rubber cover over it. I also miss the optical viewfinder that the Canon’s had but they were larger cameras. A very nice feature is that the manual is actually stored in the camera. That feature was not in any of my older cameras. The written manual is pretty worthless since the camera’s internal manual contains more information. The information does not entirely overlap. For example, the information about how many photos per battery charge is in the printed manual but not in the camera but the camera contains the information about all the onscreen icons.

   I also like the feature that you can review the photos in the camera without using the on/off switch which extends the lens. Just hit the review button and the screen comes on without the lens opening. By the time I count “one”, “two” the image is up. Another feature not available in my older cameras is the ability to review photos by date. The 570 can display a calendar, you select the date, it shows the photos from that date.

   Some of my previous cameras had a battery low warning indicator but by the time it gave a warning, the batteries were about gone. The 570 indicator gives a more precise indication in bars like a cell phone signal strength indicator.

   Panoramic mode has been available on other cameras for awhile. It is not a feature I found worth while in any camera. I think this is a perfectly satisfactory product which has been trouble free and a pleasure to use.

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3. 91 of 106 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Not a good value for the price (cheap cheap cheap build quality), April 18, 2011

   By 

   Gregory A. Henry “atlantagreg” (Atlanta) –
   
     

   This review is from: Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W570 16.1 MP Digital Still Camera with Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar 5x Wide-Angle Optical Zoom Lens and 2.7-inch LCD (Black) (Camera)

   I picked up a DSC-W570 recently at “a major discount warehouse chain” (actually, Amazon is cheaper on the price, though). I paid $179.00 for the bundle.

   The camera was blister packed with the camera, case, memory card, and basic accessories that included a USB cable, software, wrist strap, and battery/charger. When you look at this camera even up close, it almost appears to have a metal body, which would have been great. Unfortunately, once you unpack it, you realize it’s plastic – and not just any standard grade of plastic, but EXTREMELY cheap, “toy-grade” plastic. It stands to reason that these days most of the sub-$200 cameras are going to be made of plastic, but this really did feel like a toy, even once the small battery was installed to add a little weight to it. I handed it to several coworkers who commented, “Oh, is this for children?”, and were shocked when I told them it was $179.00.

   That aside, with battery charged, I tested the camera out and I’ll just go over a few of the very basics here. The camera is small enough to fit into a pocket, though due to the build quality I’d be tempted not to do it as it could easily break. The 5X zoom lens extends from the body quickly and does features an optical image stabilization (I.S.) system which I would rate as “so-so effective”, due to the fact the lens has a maximum aperture of around 6.2/6.3 when you’re fully zoomed; this means it takes in much less light when zoomed, and unless you have excellent light, the camera has to use a slower shutter speed to get the shot. Even outdoors on a sunny day but in shade, and even with I.S., the camera produced several blurry shots due to this. The LCD screen is of a lower resolution but still usable for composing shots, though it’s a bit hard to see in sunlight – there is no optical viewfinder due to the small size of the camera.

   One of the selling features of this camera is the “sweep panorama” mode, where you aim at a scene to the left, press the shutter, and move the camera to the right; the camera will then “stitch” several images together to make a long panoramic shot. The pano shots are lower in resolution however, and while good for using online or for very small prints, can’t be enlarged well. Also, the camera does not adjust for lighting variations, so during the left-to-right “sweep”, if part of your subject is in brighter light than the rest, it will most likely be completely washed out in the finished photo. The pano only works left-to-right, and you cannot use it vertically (up and down) for that type of pano, as the camera will give you an error message. You can make adjustments in the menu system to things like image size (in megapixels), exposure compensation, focusing, and even spot metering, but other more basic things are not available such as image quality (normal/fine/super fine) found on almost all other camera models. The 720p video feature actually takes halfway decent video indoors in well lit areas, but outdoors in bright sun, colors appear washed out/faded, and the level of detail is fairly blurry (though you can use the zoom during movie recording). Battery life was average, as it’s a tiny battery, so you’ll need a spare for all day shooting. Overall image quality was “so so”, and the 16 megapixel size of the pics mean next to nothing really on this size of camera as it’s a very tiny chip inside that does the capture. When viewed close, the images typically have more of a watercolorish look to them, and if you crank up the iso (light sensitivity) past the lowest numbers, this effect gets much worse, very quickly.

   Honestly, if this camera were in the $99-$109 range, I would complain much less about it’s shortcomings, and especially the incredibly cheesy build quality. But with retail prices in the $149-$179 range for this unit, I’d say there are better offerings for that price from Canon, Olympus, or even Casio in terms of build quality. Fuji has a very similar model to this Sony that sells retail for around $119.00. I’m not a photography newbie, and I know what you should reasonably expect from a camera compared to it’s price point – and this model is just far too “cheap” in quality to warrant spending the money for it unless there’s a significant price drop.

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