Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T100

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Image quality
The DSC-T100 takes great-looking photos with plenty of detail. Pictures stay sharp and free of noise as high as ISO 400. ISO 800 and ISO 1,600 produce a notable amount of detail-softening, speckled noise but are still useable. The T100's macro and super-macro modes really impress me; it took some beautiful close-up shots of flowers at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.

The camera's pictures aren't perfect, however. Like most snapshot cameras, shots taken at ISO 3,200 look more like expressionist paintings than photos. We recommend you stick to shooting at ISO 800 or lower to avoid extreme noise.

For more details on the Cyber-shot T100's design and image quality, click on the image.

Movies captured in Fine mode (640 x 480 30fps MPEG-4) look very good, as long as the motion doesn't get too complex. A couple of flowers waving in the breeze works, but an entire tree full of fluttering leaves taxes the compression algorithm too much, leaving the video rife with blocky MPEG artifacts.

Unfortunately, the trade-off leaves the video file size rather large: At about 1.3MB/sec, a minute of video takes about 77MB of disk space. That's more efficient than the MJPEG used by the Canon IXUS 75, but overall still fairly large. The optical zoom operates in Movie mode, another plus.

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T100 demonstrates exactly what a good snapshot camera should be. Its slim form looks good and fits easily in the pocket, it includes some very useful features, and it shoots great photos at a fast clip. Its price may seem a bit steep, but you'll get a lot of camera in a very small package.

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