Sony Cyber-shot DSC-M2

The wait is finally over. Sony has recently launched the Cyber-shot DSC-M2, the much-awaited update to the popular DSC-M1. Enhanced features on the new Cyber-shot include a pair of onboard stereo speakers, the option to add your own tunes in a slideshow as well as a pocket album that converts images to VGA size and stores them in the camera's built-in memory. Truth be told, the M2 rides on the success of its predecessor so long as you can afford the high-capacity Memory Stick Duo Pro media.

Movie enthusiasts who are unwilling to part with a few grand for a MiniDV camcorder will appreciate the unique design of the M2 that looks unassumingly like--you guessed it, a MiniDV camcorder. Forgoing the fact that there is no optical viewfinder on this shooter, its 2.5-inch LCD is capable of rotating 270 degrees (90 degrees lesser than the M1) that allows for novel shooting at various angles--particularly in favor of narcissists for self-portraits.

There are separate shutter buttons for photo and video beside the LCD screen itself.

Unlike the M1 where you have to slide open the camera to access the menus, half the M2's controls (Menu, Display, Resolution/delete, four-directional buttons and a swivel-rotating disc) are now on the surface of the camera. When you throw in a LCD that is rotated 180 degrees, you can playback photos and videos without sliding open the camera.

Easy access to frequently used menus during playback.

Sony deserves credit for its innovative swivel disc that allows users to scroll through pictures during playback and to fast forward or rewind videos. In addition, the disc doubles as a control to adjust the EV of the camera in Program mode. Do we hear engagement bells ringing between Sony and Apple to incorporate a touchpad option in M3? Users of the M2 will have to take note that the camera slides open only in one direction--excessive force in the other way may detach the panel altogether.

You are not suffering from double vision. Yes, like the M1, the M2 has given equal status to both photo and video capture so there are separate shutter buttons for each function, on the main control area and on the left panel of the LCD screen.

The front of the camera houses a Carl Zeiss lens, flash unit and a flash assist beam. On the reverse, we see a pair stereo microphones which was left out on the M1. A power button, speaker and three LED (Charge, Record, Play) lights line the side edge of the unit. As with most other compact digital cameras, there is a 5.5mm metallic tripod receptacle on the bottom of M2 together with the cradle connecter and a compartment that contains the media and battery.

Features
Similar to its predecessor, the M2 offers a range of consumer-targeted features though it lacks manual aperture and shutter priority modes. Apart from taking VGA-quality (640 x 480) MPEG-4 videos at 30fps, its hybrid mode makes use of the camera's buffer to record 5 seconds of video after a still image shot followed by another 3 second of footage.

In addition to the cosmetic enhancements, the Cyber-shot now sports a pair of onboard stereo microphones. To add to the whole user experience, the pocket album function downsizes captured images to VGA resolution and stores them (up to 1,100 pictures) in the camera's built-in memory. The albums can then be personalized and sorted by day and month.

Plus, the M2 is capable of playing back still images and movie clips in a slideshow format, complete with cool-looking transition frames and four different customizable music tracks. We like it that users can upload their favorite MP3 tracks to complement the slideshow, but do note that the camera has only capacity for four tunes, each up to a maximum of 180 seconds.

The non-backlit buttons on the M2 proved to be less user-friendly in dim light surroundings.

Even though the layout of the Sony camera looks daunting initially, it's fairly manageable once you get the hang of using separate shutter buttons for the still image and the video mode. One major gripe we had with the Cyber-shot was the non-backlit buttons, which didn't meant that users have to memorize the button placements when using the camera in dim lighting conditions.

The line-up of scene modes available on the M2 isn't impressive with only eight options (Macro, night, night portrait, landscape, snow, beach, sports, fireworks, candlelight) to choose from. However, it still comes with the usual programmable settings for exposure compensation (2EV in 0.3EV steps), focusing options, white balance, selectable ISO (64 through 400), picture quality, burst mode, flash levels (High, normal, low), effects (Black and white; sepia), saturation, contrast and sharpness.

Performance
Closing in on your photographic subject on the M2's 3x optical zoom lens can be a bit slow so you'll have to either settle for wide-angle pictures or risk losing that spontaneous shot while you slowly tiptoe towards maximum telephoto range. Users who are faithful to the half-press shutter release technique may need some adjusting as it was difficult to determine whether the half-press feature had been activated with its shallow button.

Be prepared to fork out more money for a high-capacity Memory Stick Duo card if you intend to shoot lots of video.

The M2 didn't disappoint us with its impressive startup--from sliding open the camera to turning the LCD to face us and finally snapping that first shot--of less than 2 seconds (time taken can be significantly reduced if you repeat the above action sequence continuously). Shutting down the camera was almost instantaneous using the side power button.

In its burst mode, the Cyber-shot allowed us to capture four 5-megapixel frames at JPEG Fine quality setting. Shot-to-shot timings came in at a lethargic 3.5 seconds with flash enabled and 3.2 seconds without flash. After we disabled the image review option, the M2's speed came in slightly better at 3.2 seconds with flash and 1.6 seconds without.

In our tests, shutter lag was barely noticeable under brightly lit environments. The flash range was limited to around 2.5m at wide-angle and 2m at full telephoto setting. The Sony's InfoLithium battery offered average battery life performance, clocking approximately 180 images (and videos), alternating between the wide-angle and telephoto lengths, photos with flash and without, slideshow review and card formatting. As a general rule of thumb, battery life will drain faster if you shoot more videos than pictures.

On a separate test, we discovered that our fully-charged battery was left with about 20 minutes of juice left when we expended our 1GB Memory Stick Duo Pro on a 46-minute video recording. So be prepared to carry an extra high-capacity Memory Stick Duo card around if you intend to shoot a lot of movies because chances are you will run out of space faster than your battery.

Image Quality
The M2 produced pleasing images with hardly any significant flaws like its predecessor. Noise was not much of an issue at low ISO levels but becomes expectedly more visible above ISO 200.

At ISO 100.

Noise is visible at higher ISO levels. This was taken at ISO 400.

We noticed chromatic aberration in the form of white lining along the edges of high contrast objects only upon magnification of the image. Otherwise, it was barely visible.

The original photo.

Under high magnification, chromatic aberration is clearly visible.

Similar to the M1, the M2 doesn't come with manual white balance which may annoy some photographers. Our macro shots turned out well with the subject in clear focus and the background appropriately blurred.

Though the stereo microphones gave us above average sound quality, we noted intermittent lapses and dropped frames during video playback. Also, we were unable to view the captured MPEG-4 videos on Windows Media Player 10 but didn't encounter any problems using Quicktime Player.

Overall, while we did not notice any noteworthy improvements on the image and video quality, the Cyber-shot DSC-M2 still presents itself as a good cross between a digicam and a camcorder.