Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W100

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Performance
The Cyber-shot DSC-W100 powered up in 1.3 seconds (which included the time for the lens to extend and warm up) and we managed to take our first shot at 1.8 seconds. Shutting down the unit was a little slower (1.6 seconds), but you won't actually feel the difference.

We could shoot thereafter every 1.7 seconds without flash. With flash on, it took 2.2 seconds between shots. With red-eye flash turned on, performance was still decent at 2.8 seconds for every picture.

Though the camera locked focus at an average of 0.5 seconds at the wide-angle setting, the unit faltered a little on the telephoto end. Continuous shooting was disappointing. In the normal burst mode, we could capture only four shots at a sluggish one frame-per-second rate. The LCD would black out in between shots so you might have to rely on the optical viewfinder if your subject is in motion. The multi-burst function was able to take a total of 16 consecutive frames and collate them into a single 1-megapixel file.

Image Quality
Even though there's no option to custom set white balance on this Cyber-shot, the W100 still churned out decent images. Noise was reasonably controlled up to ISO 400, but at ISO 800 and ISO 1,250, you would be making only small prints at best. Still, the W100 proved to be one of the better-faring cameras when it came to noise at ISO 400.

Overall, our images were well-exposed with purple fringing only moderately affecting some of our heavily backlit pictures. Barrel distortion was kept to a minimal. Colors were also rich and saturated which we liked.

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