I have always been a still picture
enthusiast which comprised almost everything from the old film cameras to new
age SLRs. Although Nikon stays on my wish list; right now serving me with
extreme loyalty is my very adorable Sony Cyber Shot DSC H-10. The camera is a
gem for its price and does well than most of the counterparts.
A few months earlier I grew
envious about something my cousin owned. The thing of envy was a cool black SLR
by Olympus with a 12 megapixel shot and around 10X zoom. It was slightly expensive
than the DSC we had but when the pictures came out; me and my Sony secretly
enjoyed as the picture quality of Olympus was nothing compared to the sony DSC,
it still did not have the crystal clear clarity that sony had. Same with sony
cybershot point and shoot which costs the same but performs much less.
Basic Details
Pixels – 8.3 megapixels
Zoom – 10X optical zoom
Lens – Carl Zeiss Lens
Full HDMI
Four basic flash modes Soft(shoot with background) Flash(With regular flash) Auto(Auto adjustment of flash settings
No Flash(without flash)
Flash and lens can be added
Steady shot, face detection,
internal memory of 512 mb and external memory slot.
Comes with a case for Lens
adaptors, battery charger, battery (Ni Cd), Memory card and adaptor, USB or TV
outlet cable.
Battery life is around 310 shots
on full charge(although I have got more than that on occasions. But once the
charge is drained, don’t expect it to turn on. It would not. When the no charge
icon blinks, turn it off and you might get one more photo, but if it turns off
on its own, then that’s it. It does get charged quickly though . The battery
charger has a small red light that will go fromred to orange to yellow to green
as it gets charged depending on the amount of charge.
The pixel range is fair enough.
Many of us mistake the megapixel to decide the quality of the photo.
Surpriiiiise!! It doesn’t !! Well to get a decent photo , 5megapixels is more
than enough. Unless you are planning on printing out a billboard with your
favourite photo. So 8 or 10 is more than enough.What really matters is the Lens
and the shutter speed of the camera that
you decide to go for. The difference in branded cameras happen here (remember
what I told you about Olympus). Canon, Nikon and sony all stay a step ahead in this
game because of their superior lens and technology. So if you plan to buy a
camera, don’t dish out the extra just because it has a higher megapixel, count
the shutter speed, lens and brand and an average megapixel.
The digital display screen is
quite large but it does lack and optical view finder. But it has never bothered
me as I am not a real professional photographer.
There are exactly ten shooting
modes.
Auto :The Auto shooting mode sets
everything to auto and does everything for the lazy photographer. It works fair
when you are not sure what to do or what to adjust in a given light setting.
Program Auto:This is where the
exposure is adjusted automatically though everything else can be adjusted by
you. The settings include all the three flashes, colour ranges, EV brightness
of the picture, Flash level, white
balance, red eye removal, steady shots, shutter speed and focus.
Colours can be set to vivid
(bright colours bet suited for colourful landscapes for eg; a carnival or an
autumn land scape) Natural(sets everything to mute colour ie a slighlty dimmer
than the normal better suited when using flash to get the natural look without
having a glow) Standard(gives you what you see) Sepia(sets everything to sepia
tone) and Black and White(sets everything to Black and white)
Manual :Control everything
including shutter speed and exposure.Advanced shooters would be comfortable
with this.
Advanced sports shooting:The flash
is turned off and the setting cannot be changed. The mode helps you with
movements. I remember shooting the dolphins jump out of water and caught it
clearly without any blur or shake.Its good to take a snap from a moving car or
even of a sports event.
Twilight:Takes Pictures in low light without flash. This
gives a damn good photo but the point is you have to be extremely still. A
tripod would be handy here.
Twilight Portrait:Takes a portrait
in low light with flash.
High ISO and low ISO:Shoots with
High and Low ISO in low light respectively.
Land scape with distant focus:Takes
landscape pictures when the focus is really distant or not on something near.
Movie mode:Shoots movie with sound.But
you cannot zoom once the recording has started.The quality is really good and
can be adjusted to suit an email attachment TV display or the widescreen.
The one thing I am not happy about
is that Sony is not good with night time shots but I guess its because of the
low end version, I have heard that the
DSC h -50 is much better in this although you have specific cameras for
night shots and SLR s like Nikon do the best. The picture quality is definitely
high and is crystal clear and you can enjoy it on the TV or on your computer.
Its not very fragile either but heavier than the point and shoots and it better
to have the belt thing attached than to let it drop on the floor as the service
spells “Expensive”
The focus and most of the things
can be adjusted. The focus can be set to AF (auto focus), Multi focus,
different lengths and then infinity according to the shot needs. The external
memory that comes with it has a 2 GB capacity although you can upgrade them. It
uses just one rechargeable battery Ni Cd. There are further settings like turn
the optical zoom on or off and man
