By Leonard Goh
10/07/2008
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/digitalcameras/0,39005881,42776720p,00.htm

When the Cyber-shot DSC-W300 was introduced, it wowed the crowd by squeezing 13.6 megapixels into the sensor, making this shooter the highest resolution point-and-shoot available in the market at the time of this review. There were initial concerns that the image quality may suffer as a result of squeezing so many pixels into the small sensor, but Sony claims that its advanced image processing engine and algorithms will keep the noise level low. It has also given the W300 a titanium coating, a first for compact cameras, and while it may be no Iron Man, it's a nice touch to a very masculine camera.

Oddly though, while the W300 succeeds its W200 in the Sony camera series, it hardly bears any resemblance to its predecessor in terms of aesthetics or features. At S$799, the W300 is currently one of the most expensive point-and-shoot cameras in the market today, and we reckon it will appeal only to those willing to pay a premium for both style and a higher image resolution.

Design

Sleek yet masculine--that was the first impression we had when we held the W300 in our hands. We had people comparing the titanium-coated matt black chassis with the appearance of a stealth bomber, but we think the dark shade lends a touch of class to the point-and-shoot. If sophistication is your cup of tea, this Sony may fit the bill.

The simple design doesn't add much to the aesthetics, but we like the placement of the rear controls which made one-handed operation really easy. The ridged mode dial gave ample resistance and for the paranoid, selected functions will be displayed briefly on the right edge of the screen to indicate the shooting mode you have chosen. The four-way directional pad is used for navigating the menus, but we would have liked it better if it was a scroll wheel instead.

The uninitiated may be confused by the Home and Menu buttons. The latter calls up capture settings while the former conjures up a menu (which reminds us of the Playstation 3) for camera set-up. We are still fumbling with these two buttons up till now and we hope that Sony can do a tasteful job of merging them together for future models.

Unlike some compacts which have different ports for specific tasks such data transfer and video output, the W300 has just one located at the bottom of the shooter. Although some critics may chide Sony for combining them, we can't think of any occasion whereby more than one cable connection is needed. We did, however, find the port rather exposed to dirt and dust.

Features

Sony has set a new benchmark for image resolution with the W300. The last we checked, the highest resolution found in a point-and-shoot camera was 12 megapixels for the Fujifilm Finepix F100fd. But the W300 pushed the limits with a resolution of 13.6 megapixels, which is more than sufficient for prints up to A3 in size.

While it may sound like a marketing gimmick to some people, the titanium-coated body actually makes sense for a compact shooter which can be subjected to quite a bit of abuse. Sony claims the coating makes the camera body five times more resistant to scratches. We tried rubbing the chassis with a key and the W300 emerged unscathed.

The 2.7-inch display is bright and easy to view even under direct sunlight. It is complemented by an optical viewfinder for framing in dim environments where the LCD may not be able to show the subjects properly. Though it may be a tad small and difficult to use, we got accustomed to it after some time. Using the viewfinder can help to optimize the battery life, too.

The 3x optical zoom is rated from 35 to 105mm. Although it covers a respectable range, it would have scored more brownie points if it had a 28mm wide angle lens.

There is full manual exposure control for advanced photographers, and changing the settings is a breeze. However, we realized that there are only three aperture settings, which may be limiting for some shutterbugs. But this being a point-and-shoot camera, it's really not much to complain about.

To keep up with the trend, Sony has incorporated optical image stabilization (IS) into the shooter. The Super SteadyShot worked well when we tested it--shots captured at low shutter speed of 1/20 second (without flash) were sharp.

A shot taken in a typical high-contrast situation would often result in lost details in the highlight and shadow region. To counter this problem, Sony has implemented the D-Range Optimizer. While image details at the extreme ends of the spectrum were not recovered, we did notice that the finer details in the mid-tones were rendered nicely.

At the heart of the W300 is the BIONZ image processing engine, which powers the noise reduction algorithm, intelligent scene recognition, in-camera retouch as well as face detection and smile shutter. The engine has respectable performance considering that it has to process the mentioned features as well as keep the noise level low in high ISO shots.

Besides the puny 15MB internal memory, the W300's storage capacity can be expanded via the Memory Stick PRO Duo slot. Although we think Sony will never do away with its proprietary Memory Stick media, we are still hoping for that day when it adopts the more affordable SD/SDHC cards.

Performance

The W300 took 2 seconds to boot up, which is typical of most point-and-shoot units. But the shutterlag clocked in at 0.05 seconds, which was quite impressive. Time to first shot measured 3.4 seconds and the overall results from these time-based tests was average compared with the cheaper Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX36.

The metering was accurate most of the time (especially during daytime), but when we changed the settings to Twilight for a night scenery shot, the picture was underexposed. We were better off using manual exposure to set a longer shutter speed.

Face detection was snappy in recognizing profiles and the shooter was quick to track as they moved around the frame. The Smile Shutter can be adjusted for different smile sensitivities. At its most sensitive setting, the shutter fired off immediately when our subjects broke into a grin.

On a full charge, the Lithium-ion battery pack is rated for approximately 300 shots. After two days of usage, the battery indicator displayed that there was still two-thirds of power left. This is quite impressive for a compact camera and we are fairly confident that the W300 will survive a weekend getaway without its charger.

Image Quality

With so many pixels squeezed into a tiny sensor, the image quality turned out to be more impressive than we expected. It could be the BIONZ engine, which did a good job suppressing noise while maintaining a decent amount of details even at high ISO settings. There is a noise reduction (NR) setting which you can change in the menu for different levels of noise suppression. Do note that the higher the NR setting, the more finer details you lose.

At ISO 80 to 200, the image is almost free of noise. There are very light speckles of digital artifacts at ISO 400 but it is barely noticeable. At ISO 800, the noise was more visible but the file still held a good amount of details. While the picture may be a tad grainy at ISO 1,600 and above, it shouldn’t be too obvious for a print smaller than 8R.

The output from the onboard flash wasn’t too harsh and we had well-exposed night portraits. The skin tone was natural and background details were accurately captured as well.

Conclusion

We are hesitant to fork out S$799 for the W300 because there are other similar options available for less. The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX520 and Fujifilm Finepix F100fd cost less than S$600, and both sport wide-angle lenses with a 5x optical zoom. Maybe it is the additional titanium coating that pushed up the price, or the premium that comes with a Sony product, but we feel that this shooter is a bit pricey for its specifications, despite its high-resolution sensor.