Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T300 (Red)

With its T series, Sony has an unfortunate habit of taking at least one step back for every two steps forward. In early 2007, it released the Cyber-shot DSC-T100, a great little camera with fast performance, a broad feature set, and solid photo quality. A few months later, Sony shipped the T200--also fast with even more features, but photos that simply didn't look as good as the T100's. Now Sony presents the Cyber-shot DSC-T300. The T300 is fast, includes even more features than the T200, and ups the resolution from 8 to 10 megapixels. Unfortunately, its photos look even worse than the T200's.

At a casual glance, the T300 looks almost identical to its predecessor. At just 7/8-inch thick and weighing 6.1 ounces with battery and Memory Stick Duo, it's slightly thinner and lighter than the T200. Underneath its stylish, slim body and signature sliding lens cover, though, the T300 received some important tweaks for the T200's faults.

The T300's zoom rocker rests comfortably on the upper-right corner of the camera, much more accessible than the T200's tiny, top-mounted zoom nub.

The "Cyber-shot" accent on the left side of the camera's front slides along with the lens cover; the T200's accent sat immobile against the camera's body, and made opening and closing the shutter slightly awkward.

Besides its stylish sliding lens cover (a signature feature on all Cyber-shot T-series cameras), the T300's display stands out as its most notable feature. You control almost every aspect of the camera via a 3.5-inch touch-screen LCD, leaving just a power button, a playback button, a shutter release, and a zoom rocker as its only physical controls. The screen dominates the entire back panel of the camera, barely leaving half a centimeter around it for the bezel. On the bright side, this huge screen gives you a large, bright view of your pictures and the menus. On the other hand, it leaves almost no room for your thumb to rest while shooting. A large, sturdy lanyard mount on the right side of the camera offers some space, but big thumbs will still tend to brush against the touch screen.

Even if you can shoot without accidentally tapping the screen, you're still going to have to delve into the camera's menu system at some point. The menus aren't just irritating; they're downright neurotic and take far too long to navigate, requiring constant reassurance with countless taps of "OK." Change the resolution, hit "OK." Change the white balance, hit "OK." Enter the camera settings menu by hitting "OK," then confirm each setting by hitting "OK" again.

As Sony's highest-end point-and-shoot, the T300 includes all the latest features. It sports an optically stabilized f/3.5-4.4 33mm-to-165mm-equivalent 5x zoom lens that delivers a surprisingly long reach for a slim camera. Unfortunately, that reach comes at the cost of wide angle and speed; a 28mm, f/2.8 lens would have been preferable, even if it didn't offer a 5x zoom. The T300 also features several face-detection shooting modes, including Adult and Child Priority, which let the camera identify kids' or adults' faces in group photos and adjust focus and exposure accordingly, and Smile Shutter, which delays shooting until the subject smiles.

A suite of onboard photo-editing and retouching tools take full advantage of the huge touch panel and included lanyard-tethered stylus. A rudimentary paint program lets you draw on your pictures, and cropping and resizing tools can trim them to fit 16:9 wide-screen displays, scale down to VGA (640x480) for e-mailing, or simply crop out bits you don't want to keep. A variety of effects offer even more options, including digital red-eye removal, radial blur, soft focus, and fisheye lens tools that can focus on a single spot in a picture with a tap of the stylus. Finally, the T300 includes a Happy Faces feature that automatically turns frowns upside-down. When you take a portrait and the subject doesn't smile, Happy Faces distorts the subject's mouth to give them a smile. The end results range from surprisingly realistic to Jokeresque. All of the T300's editing tools automatically create copies of pictures you edit; the original shot is preserved, while changes are saved to new files.

Hide Review