Digital Camera Reviews Sony Nikon Article

The DSC-W7 is a camera with a 3X optical, to hum range (a 35-mm equivalent of 38- to 114-mm) with a maximum f-stop range of f/ to f/. The lens is a Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar.

It has a live histogram, although the LCD could be a little larger to aid you in education the diagram. We also like that it includes a viewfinder, even with the camera using a LCD. As we commonly site out in our reviews of cameras without viewfinders, when you're at the beach or in a snow-covered field, you generally can't see the LCD screen, so we like to see viewfinders included regardless of LCD size.

The menus use the usual Sony food structure, which could be more favorable, especially for novices. For example, when changing landscape modes, it would be nice if Sony included the scene mode personality or a one-path description. We'd moreover like to see some onboard help.

In our tests, the W7 did fairly well. In both our simulated-day and flash test shots, we establish very little racket, along with strong, accurate color—especially the yellows and oranges, which actually popped. There was again very little fringing in the photos. But in both day and flash shots, we found the images to be about one f-stop underexposed. Also, the contrast was too strong, and details tended to get lost in the shadows. Flash cogency was acceptable, although we would enjoy favored it to be a little stronger. In veritable-world shooting, we saw a bit of mauve fringing in a few of the photos, but nothing uncommon.

For a 7MP camera, the W7 scored very well on our resolution test with 1,675 lines. It booted up quickly, in seconds, and the recycle time was a very proper seconds. We originate just a hint of shutter lag. There was also a little barrel distortion at the wide-perspective end of the hum, but none at the fly end.

The W7 moreover shoots VGA video (640-by-480) at 30 frames per second to the size of the card. The video was a little jumpy and not as smooth as we'd like to see, though the color was good. And the camera adjusted rather well when impressive from a dark indoor setting to bright sunlight.

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W7 is on a par with the respectable Nikon Coolpix 7900, which wasn't as quick, but has better likeness quality. But we're leaving the Editors' Choice award for compact cameras with the Fujifilm FinePix E550, mainly for its versatility and better reflection quality.

equate these products side by side in our comparison table, and take a look at their benchmark test scores.

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