Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T500 review (black)

What does match is the video quality. The Movie mode is impressive on the T500--at least for an ultracompact camera. Video taken outdoors in good lighting had little to no noticeable noise and good color and exposure. Indoors and in low-light situations, noise becomes visible, however not to a distracting degree unless it's very dim. Plus, you get full use of the 5x optical zoom and it's quiet enough that it doesn't get picked up by excellent stereo mic on front. A multioutput dock is included, which I connected to a 52-inch LCD via HDMI. The video looked surprisingly good viewed full screen. The only issue I experienced was with the camera itself, which frequently locked up while I was trying to navigate menus while connected to the TV. This might be unique to our evaluation unit, however.

Performance is a little up and down with the T500. Shutter lag is good at 0.5 second in bright conditions and 0.7 in dim, and the camera manages a decent burst speed of 1.5 frames per second. Turning on the camera and taking the first shot takes 2.3 seconds. The shot-to-shot time in well-lit conditions is 2.7 seconds and adding flash drives it up to 3.5 seconds. Those aren't great times for a 10-megapixel ultracompact camera. Also, it's worth nothing that the T500 is bad on battery life. You'll definitely need to buy a second battery if you want to get a full day's shooting out of it.

On most cameras, movie modes are secondary features, an extra. The opposite is true for the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T500. The photo quality takes an obvious backseat to the video quality, which is fine to a point since Sony's very upfront about this camera's movie abilities. However, with its comparatively high cost you really have to decide what's more important for your needs.

Shooting speed (in seconds)
(Smaller bars indicate better performance)

Time to first shot

Typical shot-to-shot time (flash)

Typical shot-to-shot time

Shutter lag (dim)

Shutter lag (typical)

Samsung TL34HD

1.3 

2.5 

1.7 

0.8 

0.4 

Kodak EasyShare M1033

1.7 

2.4 

1.7 

0.9 

0.4 

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T700

1.7 

2.4 

1.8 

0.9 

0.4 

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T500

2.3 

3.5 

2.7 

0.7 

0.5 

Nikon CoolPix S60

2.4 

2.2 

2 

1 

0.6