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The camera's easily pocketable, all-metal body measures just 0.875-inch thick and weighs a bit more than six ounces. It comes in silver, black, and red, so you can have your choice of colors. Despite its sensibly laid out controls, the DSC-T100 still sacrifices some of its function for form; the camera's buttons feel smaller and more shallow than I would like and can be a bit tricky for large thumbs.
A surprisingly strong heart beats beneath the DSC-T100's slim, shiny exterior. The 8-megapixel camera features a 35mm-to-175mm-equivalent 5x zoom Zeiss lens, a notable upgrade over previous T-series cameras' 3x zoom lenses. Its 3-inch screen supplies an extremely wide view; the display stays clear and colorful, even when looking at it from a near-90-degree angle in any direction. The T100 uses Sony's Super SteadyShot optical image stabilization and can boost its sensitivity to as high as ISO 3,200 for low-light and high-speed shooting. The camera also features a 9-point autofocus mode, an extremely useful feature normally found on much higher-end cameras such as digital SLRs.
The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T100's firmware offers almost as many useful features as its hardware does. Its face-detection mode automatically adjusts exposures when shooting family photos. You can also tweak color, correct red-eye, and even apply different effects such as fish-eye and cross filter, all within the camera. The T100 can also output MP3-playing slide shows to standard definition TVs with the included RCA video cable, or to high-definition TVs with an optional component-video cable. It also works with Sony's CSS-HD1 Cyber-shot Station, a dock with a remote and HD component output support. If you plan on viewing your photos on an HDTV, we highly recommend the component cable or dock option.
In CNET Labs' tests, the DSC-T100 performed exceptionally well. After a quick 1.1-second start-up time, the camera rattled off a new shot every 1.4 seconds. With the flash enabled, however, that time ballooned to almost 3 seconds; the tiny 3.4 watt-hour battery simply can't recycle faster. The shutter responded quickly, lagging just 0.4 second with our high-contrast target and 1.2 seconds with the low-contrast one. The camera's burst mode also worked admirably, snapping 15 shots in 6.6 seconds for a frame rate of 2.3 shots per second.
