Product Description

Compact feature rich camera with aluminium case in Black finish.8.1 megapixels and 4x optical zoom lens. 2.5-inch screen FaceDetection Smile Shutter and Super SteadyShot image stabilisation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19737 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Sony
• Model: DSCW130B.CEH
• Released on: 2008-02-25
• Dimensions: .27 pounds
• Display size: 2.5

Features

• Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens
• Large 2.5-inch LCD Display
• BIONZ processor
• Double Anti-blur/Super SteadyShot
• Megapixels: 8.1

Manufacturer's Description

W130 The DSC-W130 Cyber-shot digital camera delivers Smile Shutter technology for automatically capturing smiles as they happen and lets you share them beautifully in HD. You can expect stunning detail, thanks to 8.1 megapixel resolution and a Carl Zeiss® 4x optical zoom lens. Plus, Sony's Face Detection technology controls focus, exposure, and colour on up to eight individual faces, resulting in more accurate, natural skin tones. Whether displayed on the 2.5" LCD screen or your HDTV, the DSC-W130 conveys your vision with precision and style.

8.1 MP Super HAD CCD More megapixels give you more detail and definition when you make big prints or crop in tight on your subject. The advanced Sony Super HAD (Hole Accumulated Diode) CCD design allows more light to pass to each pixel, increasing sensitivity and reducing noise.

Carl Zeiss® 4X Optical Zoom Lens 4X optical zoom brings distant subjects closer to help you capture sharp, detailed long shots and quickly frame images for better composition -- great for family sports, outdoor fun, and travel photos.

Smile Shutter Mode Smile Shutter technology captures smiles the moment they happen - without the need to press the shutter. The mode can be set to capture when your subject laughs, smiles or even grins, and like Face Detection is able to differentiate children and adults to set priority.

Face Detection Face Detection technology automatically controls focus, exposure, colour, and flash to help reveal faces in shadows, make skin tones look more natural, reduce red-eye, and eliminate harsh facial glare, so your photos bring out every expression on every face in every shot. Now with adult or child priority so you can determine who the focal point should be.

In-Camera Retouching Add creative effects to photos after you shoot using any of 9 filters, including a "radial blur" effect and "retro" colour tint and trimming function, as well as a soft edge filter to soften backgrounds, cross filter to place starry "dazzles" at highlight points, partial colour filter to mute surrounding colours, or even a fish-eye filter to create interesting fish-eye lens effects, and unsharp maskunsharp masking to sharpen the image.

2.5" TFT LCD Display The large, bright 2.5" TFT LCD (115K) display makes it easy to compose shots, check results, and read menus in sharp natural colour, even in bright sunlight.

PhotoTV HD PhotoTV HD compatibility allows the camera to be connected to a PhotoTV HDcapable Sony BRAVIA HDTV via the optional HD output adaptor, for highly detailed, high-definition color images displayed in unprecedented realism and full HD quality.

BIONZ BIONZ image processor delivers speed and precision for enhanced image quality.

Dynamic Range Optimizer Powered by the exclusive Sony BIONZ high-speed processing engine, Dynamic Range Optimization preserves image data in bright highlights and reveals more detail in shadows or backlit areas -- for great results even in difficult lighting conditions.

Sony Double Anti-Blur Solution The combination of Super SteadyShot optical image stabilization and high ISO sensitivity helps compensate for shaky hands, minimizes blur, and allow flashfree shooting to preserve the mood.

High Sensitivity (ISO 3200) Mode With high sensitivity of ISO 3200, you can shoot effectively in low light without flash to preserve the mood, while the Sony Clear RAW Noise Reduction system helps suppress the colour noise that can degrade low-light shots.

STAMINA Battery Power Provides extended battery life and shooting capacity when using a fully charged Lithium Ion battery-- enough to cover that long weekend or holiday.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

I love my Cybershot
I finally decided to take the plunge and replace my old Kodak 5 megapixel digital camera. I wanted a good quality digital camera with modern features like anti red-eye reduction, decent digital zoom and good quality video recording, so having done my homework the Cybershot seemed like the best choice.

Other reviewers have criticised the Cybershot's navigation menu and buttons, but I'm still on the fence. When you're flicking through menus on screen you are given a helpful description of what each option does. I found this useful. However operating the camera has not quite become second nature to me yet, but then I guess that's because there are a lot of tweaks and options if you feel like delving beneath the surface.

I've tended to stick to 5 megapixels for my photos so far, as 8 megapixels tends to fill up my PC hard drive rather quickly thanks to the bigger file size. Unless you're running off A3 prints then you don't need to select more than 5 megapixels in my opinion.

There are lots of useful features including "continuous shoot" which lets you take multiple photos while the shutter button is held down, auto red eye reduction (not one red eye in hundreds of photos so far), and steady shot which automatically compensates for my shaky hands. I've been quite pleased with the zoom level so far - much better than my old Kodak's 2x - but the real test will be my son's Christmas play!

Quality-wise the photos look very good, and bearing in mind I'm a total amateur I've been quite pleased with some of the effects when taking photos in bright sunlight in the early evening for example. As another reviewer recommended, I tend to shoot in "Vivid" colour mode because I prefer more vibrancy in my photos. The supplied Sony software has quite basic functionality when compared to the suites offered by some other manufacturers (eg Kodak Easyshare does just about everything you want), but essential tasks like cropping can be carried out without fuss.

The slideshow feature is excellent, and with the supplied cable you can plug the camera directly into your TV's RGB socket and play it on the big screen. We did this with our recent holiday snaps (over 100 of them!), and the camera even plays background music and has transition effects between photos. Very professional, and if you have a DVD recorder then you can always record to DVD-R - great for giving to the grandparents!

A 4GB Sony Pro Duo memory stick will give you over 1,000 photos at 5 megapixels, and over 50 minutes of high resolution video. I managed to pick one up new for around £26 from another online store - they can be around £50/60 in some high street shops!!!

As you'd expect from a Sony product, the Cybershot's video recording quality is excellent. Each clip can be up to 10 minutes in length, which is more than enough for our needs. One nice touch is that you can shoot in sepia too, which you can also do with still photos.

Battery life is OK, but I only have my old Kodak to compare against and it used to get through AA rechargeable batteries like anyone's business. All I can say is that we went on a foreign holiday for a week and in just one charge I shot over 100 photos plus a couple of short videos, and there was still life in the camera when I got back. The Cybershot comes with its own battery charger so you don't need to keep buying batteries. Which is great, but my only gripe is that my battery seems a bit loose in the charger.

Overall I'm very pleased with this digital camera. Looks-wise, the black brushed steel is very sexy and contrasts nicely against the chrome Carl Zeiss lens. Performance-wise, it's a solid choice for someone like me who wants to take photos and videos of family holidays, etc. I can heartily recommend the Cybershot.

Compact but fiddly.
I bought this camera a few weeks ago to complement my main camera which is a DSLR. I wanted something compact either to take out when not wanting to carry a bulky SLR and lenses, or to allow me to just have a big lens on the SLR and use this for landscape and portrait shots.

After a bit of use I have a few gripes with it that its worth noting :

The optical viewfinder is too small to be of much use though which is a shame - as one of the few compacts these days to feature one you'd think it would be more practical. The other compromise made to make it so small is that the buttons are absolutely tiny - if you have big fingers you'll really struggle to navigate the menus.

The way the menus work is also a bit odd - some menus appear or disappear depending on the mode you have selected via the mode dial. This means for "easy" mode there are virtually no menu options at all - the camera handles everything, up to the program modes where lots of menus appear, and the scene modes somewhere in between. This is probably great for people who just do want to point and shoot but is a bit confusing when you're getting to grips with what the camera can do.

Also confusing is the bewildering array of icons on the LCD screen at times... a lot of them aren't very intuitive and they can really clutter the screen. Likewise navigating through the menus is not intuitive - i keep trying to use the circular disk below the mode dial to move through the menu options and end up setting up the timer or macro mode by mistake. I'm sure once you're used to it everything makes sense but its quite different to most digital cameras I've used.

My final gripe is that battery life is average at best and a spare Sony battery for this camera will set you back about £30. 3rd party manufacturers do make "compatible" batteries for half the cost but my camera complains about using them - it will power on and function fine for about 10 seconds before displaying an message that it needs a compatible battery. A little research on the web shows this is a common problem and Sony will just tell you to buy a genuine Sony battery.

So thats the complaints.. one the plus side :
- Face detection works well - I assumed it was just a gimmick but it really works
- Image quality is good as you'd expect (although not as good as I've seen with earlier cybershot models).
- Extremely compact.
- Offers something to both the point and shoot market and those looking for more control.
- 4x Optical zoom is good for such a small camera.
- The menu system allows you to create folders on the memory card to organise your photos which is quite handy when you have large memory cards

On balance it does what I want it to do - it just takes a bit of getting used to if you want to do anything other than snap away in "easy mode", and its a bit underhand of Sony to prevent the camera working with 3rd party batteries.

Cool-looking camera that gives sharp bright photos
After being really impressed with the picture quality from a friends Sony Cybershot DSC-W100 I decided to take the plunge with a Sony camera. This model took my eye because of the black design. After a few months of playing around (being a casual photographer) I am very happy with my purchase.

For me, the major plus points are:
sharp high resolution images at 8.1MP
a hefty 4x optical zoom
powerful flash that gives you superb photos in poor light
user-friendly menu and navigation
great looking camera

The low points are:
the camera is smaller than I imagined, feeling awkward in my clumsy hands
relatively small LCD screen - at 2.5inch (my old Kodak camera had 3inch)
annoying music when you turn it on - I havent got round to turning the sound off

I also advise getting a decent case as the screen looks like it will scratch easily.